I continued to collect more data this week and enter everything into the computer as usual. I've been feeling in a little slump lately because I wasn't sure what the next step of my project would be and it seemed like I would just be doing data collection for my whole stay at the lab. However, I was able to meet with Dr. Lewis and we had a long conversation about what the next step of my project would be. Initially it seemed as though I was continuing on a previous study comparing facial recognition abilities between children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, children with Learning Disorders, children with ADHD, and Typically Developing children. However, my conversation with Dr. Lewis was really beneficial and he explained what I would be doing after I finished collecting as much data as I could. He said that we would be working together to split my subjects into two groups- technologically oriented and non-technologically oriented, and then someone would show me how to analyze the data. He hypothesized that the "techies" would perform worse on the facial recognition task (because they would have less experience in social situations due to their preference to spend time alone and/or on electronics) and the non-techies would perform better on the task. He also explained that there isn't much research on this topic so if we found any conclusive research it could be really rewarding. To be honest, I could listen to Dr Lewis talk for hours on end because he's so smart and everything he explains genuinely interests me. I planned to only have two more weeks in the office and I should be done with data collection this week, so depending on how fast (or slow) the data analysis seems to be moving, I may have to extend my stay by a week- but we'll see!
We started off our week with a congratulatory acai bowl trip to celebrate Preston’s acceptance into a training grant program. Acai bowls in California top Playa Bowls (no question about it). From what I can tell, its a pretty huge honor to be recognized by this grant, but he’s really humble about it. On Monday, Preston and I decided that testing antibodies that have never been tested on prostate epithelial cells before would be a good objective for my first Western blot on my own. We needed to probe for ASCT2, a glutamine transporter, and GLS in order to determine if their corresponding antibodies are functional. Antibodies are crucial for Western blots because they bind to the protein of interest (POI), allowing for us to qualify its expression after imaging. As such, Preston wanted to make sure they worked by probing for ASCT2 and GLS on three different cell lines. Cell lines are commercially purchased human cells that have been immortalized (modified to grow indefinitely) by telome...
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