What appealed most to me about the DIY Diagnostics stream was the way it combined biology and chemistry with computer science. I really liked the idea of learning to code and create an app that could actually be useful. When I went to the presentation during open house, Dr. Riedel was the most genuinely enthusiastic of all the research educators I heard speak. After hearing the pregnancy test example as a DIY diagnostic, it got me thinking of the many new diagnostics that would be useful to the public, such as a reliable at home strep test. Plus, I was excited to work in a stream that was just starting.
The diagnostic ideas I am most excited about is the ones that can come from the FRIome project, in which we are testing saliva samples to find correlative data between various health factors and bacterial abundance. I hope to help enlarge the database of samples so we can a large amount of samples sequenced. Then we can look at abundance of specific bacteria, and develop experiments that can lead to new diagnostics. In my Microbiology class, my professor briefly discussed how there are ongoing studies that are looking at the relationship between subjects’ microbiomes and obesity, autism, and immune response. The more I hear about the significance of the microbiome, the more excited I get for the FRIome project.
Being part of the research community has helped me with my time management skills in that I had to always get enough hours of lab time in each week. Also doing research has taught me that not getting expected results does not necessarily mean failure, and that I should always keep working to find solutions to problems I encounter.
I came into this stream with very limited knowledge in coding. The bit of coding we learned during the spring semester has been quite helpful. This summer I started working on an app that helps to speed up the process of which foods specifically are causing widespread food poisoning to hasten the recall process. Most of this app is not completed though.
My biggest “aha” moment so far was when I used the Qubit correctly. It took me several tries to get the technique right, so I was very excited when I got the machine to properly find the concentration of dsDNA in my samples.
I’m glad I have been able to start research so early in my undergraduate career. I hope this opportunity will open doors for me to receive internships in other labs in the next couple of years. Hopefully in 20 years, we will be able to have our entire microbiomes sequenced, which would mean we would quickly be able to diagnose ourselves with things discovered to be related to or caused by the bacteria that live in us. I hope to be part of this process of discovering how the microbiome affects the health of humans.