Introduction and my first day of sampling: Undergraduate Aquarium Project

Hello Everyone!

Since I am new to the lab and not many of you know me, I thought of positing a quick introduction along with my first day experiences with sampling.

My name is Lakshmi Bharadwaj, you’ll probably see a lot of me this quarter.

(That is how I look like if you find me walking into the lab, you can say hello!)

I hope that I get to work in the lab with all of you at least once. Here’s a little bit about me:

I am a senior Biomedical Engineering major and I love photography, writing, swimming and microbes! Currently, I am extremely curious about bacteria, and my senior design project is all about how they infect your bloodstream, their clinical relevance and detection. I haven’t really dealt with a lot of microbial procedures: my time in engineering lab has been mostly machine work. So I’m really excited to learn from all of you and also observe how things work in a biology lab!

My first day in the lab was exciting because I hadn’t really seen anything like it before. I got introduced to the basics. I learnt how to correctly obtain the water, sediment and wipe samples. I learnt of the rate-limiting step in the procedure, proper techniques etc. Then, David taught me some lab protocols that I needed to follow. I was really glad with the pipettes that the lab uses because I find it extremely convenient. The only one time I have used micropipettes before involved stops and was slightly confusing. I find our pipettes so much easier to use.

I also got a basic understanding of what water chemistry involved. I learnt about how there were different tests for different chemicals and all of them required a different procedure. Although I couldn’t perform all the procedures, I got a pH reading and observed how oxygen levels were tested for.  I hope to perform each test individually and learn it in greater detail next time.

I was half-way through testing, but I had to abandon it last minute because of incorrect dilution. I did obtain a fair understanding of how this should be done in my two and a half hours in the laboratory though.

During my time in the lab and with the genome project, I hope to use this blogging space to document my observations and have it act as my notes/log book. You should expect a blogpost from me weekly.

I wish to come in every week, probably on Tuesdays or Wednesday mornings and I look forward to meeting everybody.