Slowly, but we are pippeting

Again I am destroyed, just an excuse to be brief, again. We have spent the whole day in the lab. In the morning, we had to finish preparing the buffers and solutions needed and, in the afternoon, we had to start using them. It took much longer than expected, though, which is just the expected. We are all learning here.

Tomorrow we have to repeat this afternoon’s session switching the groups. We have decided to start with the lab in the morning to see if we can leave school before going 12 hours around the clock since we arrived. Let’s see if the second day in the lab things move a bit faster and we get to do at least a short lecture on recombinant DNA tools. We will leave the heavier lecture on gene expression regulation for Friday hoping that we will be more open to the concepts.

This is fun. Exhausting, but fun

Chemistry, that forgotten cousin

I don’t know about the students but I am exhausted, so this one will be short. I know my internal rhythms have something to do with it, but I am sure most of my energy is now in the brains of those students; they stole it. They just couldn't stop asking! and I think they still want more, so I am adding more juice to my lectures to try to get them to love my beloved little molecules.

We've had our first afternoon in the lab and, as good biologists, we had a good fight with the numbers and the units to get the solutions ready. Molarity di qua, molarity di là, we have made quite a few conversions until it seemed that we were all on track and then we have divided the work load in two for the two groups to start preparing everything that we are going to need in these two weeks. It took longer than expected, so we will resume in the morning to make sure we have them ready for the afternoon, and we will leave the juicy lecture on gene expression regulation for Thursday.

What a session!

Power was shy this morning, and our students also started slow, but hey, those nucleic acids give a lot to talk about and after a while, the class was full of scientific talk again. Ponch has gone over the molecular basis of DNA and has done a nice overview of the processes of replication, transcription and translation. Transcription and its nomenclature, the template and the coding strand, who invented those names! Actually, yes, there are many concepts, but if you think about it slowly, it all makes sense.

The “coding sequence” of the DNA is the one that contains THE CODE, e.g. the one that tells you how the protein is going to be. The difficulty comes when we are given the existing tools for copying DNA into mRNA (the messenger that is going to take the information to the ribosomes in the cytoplasm so they can make the protein). The RNA polymerase can only make a complementary strand to the chain of DNA that is copying, like a mirror image. Therefore, if we copy the “coding strand” we will loose the code; we would have to read through a mirror, like when we read Leonardo’s work, and ribosomes can’t do that. But nature found an amazing way to solve this, and Watson and Crick gave us the gift of revealing it: the DNA is a double helix of two complementary strands and opposite to every coding strand, we have a template strand which is called like that because when the polymerase uses this strand as template, the emerging RNA carries the CODE.

Now, if you thought the discussion was over when we got there, ha! You should have seen the conversation that took place afterwards, starting with what is a chromosome, following with those naughty genes, and comments on how all our cells, which carry the same information! are so different to each other. We finished with a few of those videos that are making biology easier everyday for those of us that are useless when it comes to imagine 3D structures. I think we got a pretty good understanding of the processes that allow for genetic information to be kept and used. We'll get tomorrow into how that use can be (it has to be!) regulated.

Found on facebook through Trust me, I’m a biologist

We are moving

Well, the first day is over and we have survived to our first power cut. Let’s hope it gets back at some point tonight and the temperature-sensitive molecular biology reagents, which already traveled in pretty bad conditions from South Africa, don’t suffer too much of a heat-shock.

This afternoon we’ve had an introductory lecture with Dr. Wuyep (sorry, with Ponch) that by giving only a few paintbrushes about the principles of inheritance has already promoted interesting discussions. We have had the chance to see how enthusiastic our students are, and how passionate they can be when defending their positions, even though they sometimes change sides in the middle of the heat, hehe. A discussion on how the presence of malaria can influence the prevalence of sickle-cell anaemia opened the door for future conversations on genetic counseling, bioethics and the responsibility of scientists towards society, and a very lively conversation about the inheritance of skin color got the crowd most excited exchanging arguments pro and against genetic or environmental influence.

We are very excited to see how motivated our students are and how quickly they have started interacting with each other and with the faculty. We know that we are going to have to struggle through some protocols and make a bit of science alla MacGyver but, with so much human potential in our hands, this smells success already.

Tomorrow at 9am, more!

The show is on

The presentations have been made this morning. Seven students coming from Nigeria are already here; one is still on his way. Four more have joined us from Tanzania, and we have another eight students from our KIU Western Campus. Dr. Ponchang Wuyep has come back from Nigeria to teach this course together with Dr. Marta Vicente Crespo. We will also have the opportunity to interact with Dr. Stella Carlomagno, a pioneer Molecular Microbiologist that has come from Italy to participate in the conference of medical students that is taking place in Ishaka.

The faculty have introduced the course giving a general picture of what we will be doing in the next two weeks. We are going to be working together for many hours from now on, and we hope we will become some kind of a family. The regular schedule will be from 9am to 12pm and 3pm to 6pm, unless the protocols call on us to change it. We are learning research techniques here, and research always asks for flexibility when planing our day.

We will resume at 3pm for an introductory lecture of Dr. Wuyep (Ponch) in the Postgraduate lecture room.

Let's keep up the enthusiasm!

Starting 10:30am

We are accommodating some students that just arrived, and hoping that those who arrived this weekend will join us soon. We will be starting at 10:30 am today. Sorry for the late notice.

Counting down

We are just two days away from the beginning of our adventure...