21 Days and Counting!

It’s been three weeks since the orientation that kicked off one of the most exhilarating summers I’ve had in a long time; 21 days and counting and I am still excited about how much research is going on around me and how much impact it will have in the biomedical field.

Having spent the last two semesters training with the equipment and carefully selecting a project to work on really paid off, because I have quickly learned that gathering data for a few hours, couple of days a week is so much different than drowning in said data. Each accomplishment opens five new areas to work through, with more possibilities than I expected. Luckily, I have an amazing mentor, Dr. Groome, who has a peculiar taste in music and always brings the party, he also brings the best challenges to the table, each one making us tear our hair off but also serving as sufficient motivation, and we actually win sometimes; well his grad and PhD students do but it’s all team effort so I get to share the glory.

Working on sodium channel mutations specifically in relation to channelopathies like Hypokalemic Periodic Paralysis is an invigorating process that involves a lot of electrophysiology and molecular techniques, way more than I had imagined I would be interested in over a year ago. The thought of tinkering around and making my mutations myself has me remarkably pumped and terrified at the same time but honestly, I cannot wait to get my hands on all the technology up in the core.

I love all the work we do down here, so much so that I almost forget about the meetings we have and my lab mates have to drag me off which sucks because these stairs don’t climb themselves. I am looking forward to experiencing a whole lot more about the biomedical field, coming up with different projects, seeing them through and learning from each of them accordingly.

#sodiumchannelmutations