First Day

Wednesday was my first real day of SCORE. I'm working in the molecular biology department in Cell Signaling Technologies in Danvers. I learned about all the different steps I'll have to take in order to complete my project, and what the overall purpose of my project was. My job is to culture cells and clone them using a vector. And later ligate them into mammalian cells in order to be expressed. When Jennifer (the scientist im shadowing) explained all of the information and procedures to me it was a little but confusing at first because I didn't know some of the terms, but doing outside research on the things I didn't know cleared a lot up for me. As soon as I got started actually doing work, it became a lot easier for me. It felt really cool because all of the things I had learned about proteins, enzymes, plasmids, and DNA was happening right in front of me. I'm not legally allowed to talk about the exact project I'm doing and the steps that im doing within that. Cell Signaling gave me my own notebook where I have to record all of work and steps I do everyday so they can have hard evidence of what is going on in the lab in case they need it in the future. So far im starting to really get the feel of what being an actual scientist is like!