Having to take multiple classes in college while still managing to have enough sleep,  good grades, and a  social life is hard enough as it is. Being committed to doing research while ALSO juggling those array of tasks is only for those who are willing to stay up longer nights in order to experience and enjoy what they always wanted to do. DISCOVER!

It is with this very excitement of diving into the world of research that allows me to overlook those days when I find myself curled up at the head of my bed trying to finish up an essay late at night after having a day filled with classes, research, and club meetings. Even when I find myself having to deal with a sore throat while also balancing the time I spend in the lab and the time I spend studying for three upcoming midterms.

If you are an undergraduate student reading this, you might be thinking to yourself,  ” why should I bother to do research now if I could do it during my senior year or at graduate school?” or even, “why should I do research if I could have more time for sleep?” You definitely could wait until your senior year or graduate school or just sleep in, but why not start now? Starting research during your undergraduate senior year may be too late for you to figure out what you want for graduate school. Why not start looking to see where your interests REALLY lie as soon as you get the chance? College is the time to see who you truly are and figure out where your life is headed.

Working in a research laboratory is like no other. The experience of working for or with a very well accomplished scientist allows undergraduates to open their eyes up to a whole new world of innovation. Through the use of cutting edge technology, students can see what science in action looks like. After one completes an undergraduate degree in the sciences, science is no longer only about books, but instead about the application of what one has learned up to this point. By doing research as an undergraduate, you may be able to have a firsthand look at what that sort of life you would life to have as well as already start applying the knowledge you are gaining from your classes into your lab work. Seeing a simple question grow into an experiment that eventually yields results is a very rewarding experience both mentally and emotionally. Personally, having to balance research with everything else that is going on in my life is challenging but most definitely worth it!

I also cannot wait to present the research that I did over summer 2013 at the upcoming SCCUR (Southern California Conference on Undergraduate Research). Wish me luck!

This summer has been one great ride of discovery! I cannot wait to continue to conduct research while I am at UCSB and even beyond. Not only are the faculty members here considerate and determined, but, most importantly, are also willing to trust young undergraduates who are simply enthusiastic to dive into the incredibly thrilling world of research.

One very exhilarating part about research is not only uncovering answers you set out as your goal, but also discovering things about your project that you did not even have set out in search of. For example, I have been looking into the role of PHA-4 and the effects it has in the pharynx and the uterus of a C. elegan. As I was going through the hundreds of worms that I took pictures of using a fluorescence microscope, I came across few worms that not only had a cyan color fluorescence in the pharynx like I had expected, but also had cyan colored muscle cells. This cyan color was given off by the fluorescently tagged IFB-2 protein that is intestine specific.This shows us that the muscle cells of the C. elegan possibly have the capability of transdifferentiating (going from one differentiated cell type directly into another) into intestinal cells. A concept that was not even considered when this project was taken on.

Presenting your findings is another aspect of research that I was able to experience and enjoy because of this internship. At first I never expected the audience gathered at this poster session to have much interest in the research I was conducting because a large majority of the posters dealt with subcategories of engineering while I was of the molecular, cellular, and developmental biology department. What I realized after the poster session was that the people attending this session were not there for a specific subject, but for the acquisition of general scientific knowledge. This is why I was excited to explain my project to many people that came across my poster as well as go around and understand the projects undertaken by other undergraduates.

As my EUREKA internship over the summer comes to a close, I have realized that this internship has given me a new appreciation for the applicability of science instead of just learning about parts of science that have already been discovered. Although you learn about the history of science in a science class, the actual practice of science not only allows to learn as you go along, but it also helps develop your own practical and problem solving skills within a laboratory setting. DOING science is much different than simply STUDYING science. Much appreciation to all that have taken a role in creating and sustaining this enriching program (Arica Lubin, Kevin Moore, M. Ofelia Aguirre, CSEP, CNSI) as well as to Dr. Rothman for allowing me to join his wonderful lab and also to my mentor, Misty Riddle. I cannot wait to continue to do what I love in the years to come!

Hi everyone, I am Alexander Atamian (Alex for short) and I am going to be a second year biochemistry and molecular biology major at UCSB. I remember first being introduced to the C. elegan organism when I was in my biology high school class. Back in high school, I never thought that such a simple organism could have the capacity to be so complicated. I also never thought that I would even see this creature outside the textbooks let alone conduct research with them.

I was working in Dr. Rothman’s lab for about six months before I actually started conducting my own experiments. The amount of information that I had to absorb in that six months in order to start off on my own experiments seemed daunting at first. Knowing what genes and transcription factors that were specific to each part of the organism was the hardest part. It was toward the end of the six months when everything started to settle when I finally realized that I could make a significant impact on the overall project that the lab is working on. This project concerns the idea of transdifferentiation.

Transdifferentiation is defined as the switch of one cell type to another resulting in the loss of ones cellular characteristics and gain of the other. What we noticed was that when elt-7, a transcription factor specific to intestinal cells, was expressed throughout the organism, the pharyngeal cells of the organism turned into intestinal cells. This was very interesting because these cells did not have to go through a multipotent stage in order to switch into a different cell type. It was with this finding that led the lab to raise a slew of questions. These questions are the ones that are being undertaken by about 5 members of the Rothman lab.

When I was given the job of understanding the relationship between pha-4 and elt-7, I did all I could to get some background on the pha-4 gene. When I went online and tried searching for background information, I realized that what I am working on something that has not been undertaken in the past. This amazed me because I was trying to answer a question that not one graduate student, post doc, or professor knew. I am currently using a process called RNAi, which is when you knock down a certain gene and see its affect on the organism depending on what you fluorescently tag.

The first week mainly consisted of me organizing my entire schedule for the summer and trying to fully understand the experiments. Even though it started off slow, I am now in a position to go at a speed that can allow me to make significant progress and cannot wait to plow through and discover the unknown!