For my practicum project, I worked with the Integration Initiative: Sex, Aging, Genomics, & Evolution (IISAGE) to help verify the sex determination system in Oedura monilis, or the ocellated velvet gecko. I did this at Marquette University’s biology department with the Gamble Lab. The goal was to progress IISAGE’s efforts to understand the relationship between sex and aging.
A typical day working on my project would start at 8 am when I go into the lab and conduct PCRs. This entailed mixing extracted DNA, primers, DNA polymerase, and other materials into a thermocycler to replicate the DNA. Most days I replicated DNA in bulk and the only thing I had to do was the next step which was gel electrophoresis. Gel electrophoresis visualized the replicated DNA and used electricity to pull DNA along agarose gel to show what DNA was replicated using various primers. I repeated this process with all the primers I created early in the summer, so it took up most of my time. Whenever a problem arose that I needed to problem solve, I often bounced ideas off of the supervising graduate students.
The principles of fact-based reasoning and assessment were reflected in myself and the scientific professionals around me during this internship. Things often didn’t go according to plan for people in the lab. Whether that be a graduate student not getting the amount of DNA that they wanted from DNA lysis, me not getting the results the lab expected from my project, or the freezer not closing properly. Every time a problem arose we approached them with empirically based questions and solutions. When the DNA wasn’t lysing, the graduate student systematically tried everything under the sun to figure out what she was doing wrong from having other people do certain steps to changing the utensils she used. Watching her I took a similar approach to see if I did anything wrong to get my results and once it was proven that the results I got weren’t flawed, the question was what the results meant. This put my empirical problem-solving skills into practice, and I can confidently say that I developed those skills trying to solve the puzzle that was my project.
This experience showed me the world of fieldwork and developed my love for it. The Gamble Lab participated in a BioBlitz where they searched a park for herps. It was incredibly enlightening and showed me that I want to work outdoors with wildlife in some capacity. I would also like to do a research project as an undergraduate student. I developed tangible genetics research skills that can translate well for learning other research skills. If possible, I would’ve taken BSCI222 or genetics before this internship to understand everything better. Genetics was a key aspect of my project and taking that class would’ve nuanced my understanding of what I was working on. My next steps after this internship were to switch my major from Neurobiology to Biodiversity and Conservation Biology and do more research on campus. I probably won’t go back to work for Dr. Gamble, but the experience was incredibly important to my development. It shows researchers here that I have experience and will be a valuable asset to their labs. Additionally, building my relationship with the Gamble lab taught me a lot about research and life itself. I’m happy I was able to get to know them better.
I absolutely recommend this opportunity to future SGC scholars. There’s a lab here researching telomeres in bats, so it’s accessible and has a lot of diverse research. The opportunity also pays you a $6,000 stipend. You get paid to go somewhere in America and research. It’s a win-win! There are also REUs for other fields, so any student can apply for any topic and get paid to go somewhere and do research. For IISAGE specifically, they take applications in November, but if you want a different experience, you can look at the NSF website and look for other projects funded under them that are taking undergraduate research interns.