2nd POST: Last Semester

This semester has been going by so fast! Not only is it my last semester within the BIOMINDS program, it is also my last undergraduate semester. Because of this, I have more free time between classes and the research has moved along so fast. From 1-5, I would say we have accomplished about a 4 (or 75%) of our goals in only a month, so we are moving at a great pace. The nematodes had to be frozen over the winter vacation with an experimental protocol which we modified to reach our needs. We did not know if we would be able to defrost them and continue work as normal. Well, as life would have it, they defrosted and are very well alive! During the process, all adult nematodes dies but the egg-driven larva survived. We ended up culturing the larva and within five days (normal nematode adult development) we had healthy adults. We also have another advantage from this process, it allowed us to synchronize all the stages so now all the nematodes are all in the same life cycle stages, meaning we can calculate to extract only all adult protein samples. Since then we have cultured and subcultured a number of times and they are replicating at a great rate meaning we can extract proteins as quick as within the next two weeks. As for another goal we had, we needed to theoretically complete the signaling pathway for anxiolysis by NPY ti propose a model. We have completed this pathway through literature review and are EXTREMELY excited! Overall, everything is going great. As for the Abstract, it was submitted and I will post it publically on the next post.