Week 8:
The Clock is Ticking

July 21, 2021

More and More Assays

This week I spent a good amount of time helping to run samples for antigen ELISA and antibody ELISA. I had not been able to look over the protocol and completely understand the antigen assay before now, so it was nice to help run it and further my understanding. We do this assay, which is a sandwich ELISA, to monitor virus shedding in our samples. I only have a few more weeks to learn as much as possible about as many assays as possible. The clock is ticking!

I also began working on new samples for antibody ELISA, the assay I have spent the most time working on during my time in the Yuan laboratory. These samples have already been tested using one variable, and we are now testing them with two new variables to compare results from all three. These variables are, simply put, different virus-like particles (VLPs) that we can use to mark samples with antibodies specific to each VLP. We will compare the number of each type of antibody in each of the samples we are testing. It took a bit of tinkering to optimize the assay for these samples, but we had the assay up and running by the end of the week. It was interesting to work on these samples instead of the ones I have been working on because usually, I run five samples at once on six plates each. To save the sample and other reagents, though, before the assay is running well, we only run two plates (one for each VLP we are using). I have never really had to think about saving samples just in case the assay does not work at school because everything is well-practiced and polished by the professors. This was a great way to be exposed to a real-world lab situation. Even though this assay has been working for the two months I have been here (and before), we still had to adjust this set of samples, which I never would have thought to do. Something like this is brought to my attention each day, something I have never thought of as very prevalent and important in research. 

Fine Dining

With my time here winding down, my coworker, friend, and former teammate Sofia Schnur and I decided to make the most out of the next few weeks. We cooked dinner together and went horseback riding. The dinner was fantastic, and riding horses for the first time in a couple years was awesome. I also learned, kind of, how to rope… Still have to work on that a bit, though.