Week 1: Orientation and introductions

After completing my first week of this internship with CMOP, I can tell that my project will be very interesting. I am working in Brad Tebo's lab with Roberto Anitori. The project focuses on microbes collected from ice caves in Antarctica, which oxidize manganese or iron from volcanic glass. My work for these next nine weeks will be focused on culturing these microbes, and identifying them using various methods.

Last week, shortly after the intern orientation, I was able to start right into bacterial culture. I was a teaching assistant for microbiology for two years, so a lot of these techniques are very familiar to me (though the microbes are very different then anything I worked with as an undergraduate). So far I have done a bit of culturing, made some media, did PCR, ran a gel, and have done a lot of reading! Though it is taking me a while to get through the scientific literature, it is very helpful in the process of understanding exactly what I am doing during this project.

So that pretty much describes my first week. I am very excited to be here, and know I will get a lot out of this experience!