Week 7: Field trips!

This week, the interns got to go on two field trips! On Tuesday, most of us piled into vans, and we drove to Bonneville dam. It was interesting to learn about how the dam works, and what they do to try and keep fish populations healthy despite the way the river has been altered. We also visited the fish hatchery and saw some huge sturgeon, and then finished up the day by hiking to the top of Multnomah falls. The second field trip was up to OHSU's School of Medicine on Friday. I appreciated seeing a tour of that campus, and going through many of the biomedical labs. We talked to some grad students from neurology, and heard about Community Health as related to native populations and consumption of fish from the Columbia River. All in all, it was quite the interesting day.

In the lab this week, I was able to run FISH (not fish!) twice, using different variables. We figured out the concentration of SDS that we will be using, so my next run of FISH was done to determine how much EUB probe could be used. My goal for these next couple weeks is to try to reduce background as much as possible. Doing so will allow me to visualize the bacteria present on the soils samples we have been working with.