Today was a less exciting day at the Sheikh lab, but a few interesting tidbits of knowledge were imparted!
On a fun trip to collect cell media from the tissue culture facility, Shruti and I talked about the importance of keeping things cold in a lab environment. If the temperature gets too hot, sensitive samples like DNA and RNA can easily denature. Dry ice and regular ice are both used commonly to keep things cold. It’s pretty common to see things being held in a rolling cooler around campus, especially around the areas filled with science labs and research buildings. The cell media that we were bringing back to the lab was going to be used to help grow the colonoid cells, which sadly, I was unable to see. I did have a lot of down time on this day, but I was able to spend more time getting comfortable with the campus and get to know some of the researchers on a more personal level.