Monday, August 03, 2009
It's been a week since Honours started.
1st week was rather busy, ending work around 6 plus everyday except on Fri. Apparently, thereis a TGIF party once every 2month on the last friday. There'll be booze and snacks for us to enjoy. Hahas. Everyone that I've met in the department is friendly and nice. Got to know a few people who're working in other labs.
Michaela, my co-supervisor, is a extremely nice lady. She's currently doing her post-doc in RMH. Although she's busy, she's still very patient with Melvin and I and explained everything that we're uncertain.
My supervisor, Mike, is also another friendly fellow. At least now I feel comfortable in the lab and I'm starting to enjoy my research, though it's stressful and I'll have to spend long hours in sch. I guess I'll just have to learn to handle with this stress and strive to perform my best.
Anyway, I forsee that the subsequent weeks would be very hectic for me. I've already started designing primers for my expt, with Mike's help and growing my parasite culture. There'll be cloning expt, immunoprecipitation, western blot etc etc. Not forgetting 14 journals that I have to read. Oh ya! I forgot to mention what my research is about. I'll try to summarise it in layman terms so that most people would understand what I'm talking abt. Hahas..
Basically, I'm researching on Plasmodium falciparum, the cause of malaria. Specifically, i'll be focusing on the epigenetic of malaria. The parasite is able to undergo antigenic variation such that it can escape the human immune detection, hence people are suspectible to malaria infections even after a primary infection. I'll be looking at histones that are thought to control the transcription of certain important genes such as PfEMP1. The regulation of transciption in this case is through epigenetic,referring to changes in phenotype (appearance) or gene expression without changing the underlying DNA sequence.
Okay... I still think it's pretty technical for some people to understand. Hahas..
National Day is this Sunday.. Still wondering if I shld go for the pre-celebration event at Seven and the NDP celebration on sunday....
think again. 7:51 PM
