The 9 to 6

(From Mary Bohan)

Work has kept me quite busy the past few weeks, as I spend every day in the Brenner Center for Molecular Medicine, working on the computer or in the lab. For the first half of my stay in Singapore, I was unable to start my work in the wet lab, due to the fact that I had not received my work permit. It worked out perfectly though, as I completed an analysis of the bioinformatics of Dengue.

I first read up about the disease, attended a seminar given by a prospective member of the Duke-GMS Medical School staff, and was given an overview of my work by my supervisor, Azlinda. Then I set to work on the computer, finding RNA complete genome sequences and aligning them using quite complicated software to visualize the differences between different strains of the virus. I eventually found enough data to be able to look at changes based on geographic location, as the virus is located in the Americas, Africa, and Asia, serotype, as there are four not mutually exclusive serotypes, namely Dengue 1, 2, 3, and 4, and severity, as there are two types of Dengue that can be diagnosed, the typical Dengue Fever, and the severe Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever. My eyes would ache every day after staring at the multicolored sequence analyses. I eventually completed my task, and I even taught the other members of the lab how to use all of the programs as well as what I had found, so my work was definitely quite useful.

Last week I finally received my green card from the Ministry of Manpower, along with a stamp in my passport, and began my work in the wet lab. Another girl joined our lab, Yinglin, a recent graduate from Singapore, who had previously been conducting research on developing more nutritious genetically engineered forms of rice. Once Yinglin arrived, Azlinda matched the two of us together, and for the first two days I watched as she worked in the lab, but after that I was on my own. To be honest I don’t fully understand what I’m doing, changing media and performing cell cultures. I just do what I’m told and hope for the best, as if I do something incorrectly, my cells will become contaminated, which means the work of everyone else in the lab will have to be thrown out. It’s been quite stressful, and I’ve reminded my lab supervisor that perhaps this isn’t such a good idea, as they’re gambling the entire success of the lab on my beginner skills, but she’s convinced it’s a good idea, so I trust her. So far I’ve been lucky, but my immediate supervisor, Daniel, had to go to mandatory army training for the week, so without him to watch over me I’m a bit worried.

The basic idea of the work is to prepare cells for the use of the lab in the next few weeks, in experiments to look at the genetic makeup of the Dengue virus. The lab is comparing the genetic makeup of the Dengue virus to the similar Yellow Fever, Japanese Encephalitis, and Hepatitis C viruses. By comparing the responses of certain proteins, they are hoping to find out more about the virus, information that can hopefully help in finding a vaccine. It’s very interesting work, but at times it’s hard to see where my immediate cell culture work will play a part. In terms of the most interesting things to learn so far, I would say its been fascinating to see how changes in the structure of the sequences of these viruses can be correlated to different types of disease, geographic locations, severity, etc. I find it much easier to identify with things that pertain to real life and health, so I think it's really interesting to see the huge effects that one small change in a sequence can have.This experience has definitely taught me to understand how much time and effort goes into one experiment, one paper.