Starting Out

It's hard to believe that it's already begun, but week one of my internship is almost over! As part of the SFS program, I'm going to be working at the Transplantation Biology Research Center (TBRC) of the Massachusetts General Hospital for eight weeks.

Commuting has been an interesting part of my experience in this past week. Every morning, I catch the 7:42 commuter rail into North Station, where there is a shuttle that takes all commuters into the Navy Yard and to Building 149, which is where the TBRC is located. It's always a new and interesting experience each morning to travel alone, and it makes me feel really young when I look around at all the college students and adults that are taking their normal commute in along with me!

The lab itself is amazing. When I first walked into the building that houses this research center, I was in awe of how beautiful it was. Most of the lab has a great view of the Boston Harbor. My postdoc is Josh Mollov, who graduated from Brooks in 1996. I also see Ellen Beauchamp who worked at the TBRC last summer and has come back this summer to work under another one of the fellows, Tosh. Ellen has been great at helping me get settled into the center by mentoring me and explaining lab procedures. She's also helped me find my way around the place - it is easy to get lost! Tuesday, we both went to a meeting with the entire TBRC lab.

This past week, I've been learning the basics of immunology and shadowing Josh and Ellen. Josh has been doing a few bone marrow experiments for the past couple of days, which is a complicated and long procedure to see how effective the mouse bone marrow is in reconstituting new cells, and how well it is accepted and used. Bone marrow can be obtained from mouse bones, such as the humorous and the tibia. One thing that I have learned to do as part of this experiment is the counting of cells. Counting cells is important to determine how many were taken from the mice at the beginning of the experiment, and also serves as a measure of accuracy depending on how many useful cells exist after killing off other cells, such as red blood cells and T-cells. To count cells, you have to find the correct dilution and lyse the red blood cells. After this, you are free to examine the cells in a 16-box grid and hand count the cells under a microscope. Depending on the dilution, this number could be very small or very big. Something that I've learned quickly - when you fail, just try again :)