During my two weeks in the Pathways Research Explorers Program at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, I have had a very fun time and learned many new things about Cancer. I have also met new people both in this program and guests who visited us during the two weeks. When I first entered the program, I honestly did not know what to expect. At some points, I even felt like I did not belong in the program because I thought everyone would know much more than I did. However, I quickly realized that everyone was in the same boat as me, as we all knew just about the same information. As guest speaker Alicia Morales said, we all had a sense of “imposterism” meaning we felt like we didn’t belong with the other people in the program.
My favorite parts from the first week of the program were: using the micropipettes to extract DNA from a strawberry, touring the Fred Hutch facility, and seeing all the robots that are frequently used by Fred Hutch. I also enjoyed Ms. Morales coming to talk about “Imposterism” and Dr. Stoddard coming to talk about cell crystallization and his experiences going to the USSR to fly them into space in 1989 due to the fact that the Challenger disaster in 1986 caused NASA to ground their space shuttle programs.
My favorite part of the second week and my most favorite overall, was learning about CRISPR gene editing. This can be used to remove cancer cell genomic DNA in a human body which is a very good thing. However, a person can use CRISPR to edit their future children’s DNA, to make them taller, stronger, or even change their hair/eye color. I find this to be very scary because it is like you completely change what makes a person naturally human. Another favorite part of the second week was when Dr. Raaybya came to give a talk about her life story. One thing that really resonated with me was her telling us to do something that you really love and to not just do it for the money. She also said that you can change professions at any time. This made me realize that you should also do what your heart tells you and not what others say. Besides all the learning and experimenting we did; my favorite part was playing Mafia with the group, which is a murder mystery game. This helped me build a special connection with the group.
Overall, this program was educational and fun. I learned so much about cancer, how T/B cells work and I learned how to put dye into an electrophoresis gel . I also met a lot of fun and interesting people. I would do this again because it was such an amazing experience.
This is a photo of the Allen institute, which was named after former Seahawks owner Paul Allen. The institute studies what brain disease can do to a person’s brain. I liked how in their facility you could see all the labs without having to walk far, I just found that very interesting.
This was me micropipetting dye into a microtube in order to break down DNA for gene editing. This was an incredibly fun experience for me because the only time I have ever done micropitting was at Fred Hutch and never at school, and it showed what being a scientist is like.
This was the art that I did at Fred Hutch. Basically, what everybody did was get into groups of three with each visitor that came and tried to do the best artist impression of models that they presented to us. My painting was writing an example version of the four graphs that were presented. Although my painting was not very good, I really liked this activity because it was fun and creative. I had never thought of science through an artistic lens.
This is a picture that I am pretty sure are mouse embryos. They will be genetically modified to receive the human immune system. This is because their main purpose is to be injected with HIV to test the effects on them and how to cure it. However, since they do not have the human immune system, HIV would be immediately killed because the mice's immune system cannot be infected by it. Therefore, we need to” humanize” the mouse embryos.
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