The Learning Process

This week I began my internship at the University of Arizona College of Pharmacy. So far it has been a huge learning process. As a senior in high school, I possess a basic knowledge of biology but I am lacking the college education that is often required to fully understand the research. Although I am missing some knowledge, my on-site advisor has been teaching me the basics. On Monday I learned how to use pipettes. This is an essential skill for the type of lab work that I will be doing. I also began learning how to do Western Blots. Western Blots are used to test for the presence of proteins in a tissue and is a heavily used method in this type of research. On Tuesday I finished learning how to do a Western Blot and I also learned how to read the results. On Thursday I began learning how to do Immunohistochemistry (IHC). This is another method used to detect protein presence and is slightly more complicated than Western Blots. Overall, this week has mostly been a training period. I am learning the basic skills that I will use throughout this project.