This video is so cool! It reminds me of my life as a scientist. It is seriously amazing what has happened in the fields of molecular biology and genetics just since I've been in college, and I'm sure the same kind of explosion of knowledge is happening in other fields as well. I'm sure that graduate school will open my eyes to even more exciting things as new discoveries are being made.. Heck, I might even be a part of some of these new discoveries! Watch this video. It will blow your mind.
In other news, I've finally gotten my Honors thesis approved with my academic adviser! The next step for me is to write up a 5-10 page prospectus to the Honors department with background information, significance of the project, etc. and then hopefully they will give me a $1000 grant to pay for the materials and sequencing and stuff. Then I will be spending all of this next semester researching and doing lab work, then I will spend all of spring term writing my 30-50 page thesis, then I will have to defend it in July, and then hopefully I'll be able to graduate with Honors in August... just in time to start school again haha
Anywho... here's some background info on my project for all you interested blog readers.
There is a species of grass called Cheatgrass that has been invading Western ecosystems for the past 130 years or so.
It is not native here, but is very weedy and grows super fast, choking out other natural grasses and shrubs wherever it goes. Needless to say, it's causing tons of problems for lots of other plants and animals out here, so scientists have been trying to find ways to get rid of this pesky Cheatgrass... the trick, though is finding a way to get rid of it naturally without harming the natural plants and animals in these wild and delicate ecosystems. A possible method has in fact been discovered, which is what I'll be working on.
There is a fungus that infects the Cheatgrass seeds, making them nonviable when they are fully mature and drop to the ground. Thus, if the Cheatgrass can't produce seeds, it obviously won't be able to spread any futher, and then the existing plants will eventually die off. Not very much is known about this fungus at this point, so I'm going to get samples of its DNA, sequence its genome and map all of the genes onto its genome. Also, I will be paying special attention to genes that make the fungus virulent vs. avirulent, map where those genes are located in its genome, and divise a way to control the genes to make them all virulent so they will infect the Cheatgrass. Cool, huh? It's going to be a ton of work, but it's going to be soooo fun for me. It includes lots of things that I'm really passionate about like the environment, bioinformatics/computer work, and genomics.... so it's basically the perfect project for me and I can't wait to get started.
In other news, I've finally gotten my Honors thesis approved with my academic adviser! The next step for me is to write up a 5-10 page prospectus to the Honors department with background information, significance of the project, etc. and then hopefully they will give me a $1000 grant to pay for the materials and sequencing and stuff. Then I will be spending all of this next semester researching and doing lab work, then I will spend all of spring term writing my 30-50 page thesis, then I will have to defend it in July, and then hopefully I'll be able to graduate with Honors in August... just in time to start school again haha
Anywho... here's some background info on my project for all you interested blog readers.
There is a species of grass called Cheatgrass that has been invading Western ecosystems for the past 130 years or so.
It is not native here, but is very weedy and grows super fast, choking out other natural grasses and shrubs wherever it goes. Needless to say, it's causing tons of problems for lots of other plants and animals out here, so scientists have been trying to find ways to get rid of this pesky Cheatgrass... the trick, though is finding a way to get rid of it naturally without harming the natural plants and animals in these wild and delicate ecosystems. A possible method has in fact been discovered, which is what I'll be working on.There is a fungus that infects the Cheatgrass seeds, making them nonviable when they are fully mature and drop to the ground. Thus, if the Cheatgrass can't produce seeds, it obviously won't be able to spread any futher, and then the existing plants will eventually die off. Not very much is known about this fungus at this point, so I'm going to get samples of its DNA, sequence its genome and map all of the genes onto its genome. Also, I will be paying special attention to genes that make the fungus virulent vs. avirulent, map where those genes are located in its genome, and divise a way to control the genes to make them all virulent so they will infect the Cheatgrass. Cool, huh? It's going to be a ton of work, but it's going to be soooo fun for me. It includes lots of things that I'm really passionate about like the environment, bioinformatics/computer work, and genomics.... so it's basically the perfect project for me and I can't wait to get started.
2 comments:
that video is mind blowing. even more mind blowing is that you make science easy-to-read, which is a huge talent!
I'm not going to lie - I got lost in your thesis. But it sounds wonderful and challenging! You'll have to explain it to me sometime soon!
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