Moab

The first week in the lab was great; I've already learned so much.  Dr. Capecchi was really nice- I'm working closely with one of hist postdoctoral fellows and a lab technician.

The other day we had a required seminar to attend for my research program.  One of the administrative workers for the summer research program asked me "are you turning mice into bats yet up there in Capecchi's lab?" and laughed.  I thought she was joking.

So far I have been learning a lot of techniques and pieces of things; today I got a general overview of two main projects we are working on. One of the large projects is focused on transferring an entire bat chromosome into a mouse stem cell with the hopes of creating a transgenic mouse that expresses the bat DNA- turning a mouse into a bat! The other day I got into the lab and Matt (the postdoc I work with) told me Mario needed to meet with him most of the day and wouldn't be around so I would need to get help from Joan (lab technician).  Apparently Mario had a meeting with Bill Gates in a few days to get some more grant money to fund the project and needed some presentation materials from Matt... I know, right?!! Too cool.

We went to Moab last weekend as part of this research program.  We had a lot of fun river rafting down the Colorado River.

I'm making some new friends...

The weather was perfect- not too hot and not too cloudy.

We hiked up to Delicate Arch; the wind was blowing so hard with a bunch of sand in it that it was probably as good as a microderm abrasion treatment.  Too bad you can't really see the arch in the picture; we were too busy fighting the wind to check and make sure we got a good shot.