Join us in the fight against (?) cancer
Mod 2 was filled with its ups and downs. If you were a cancer cell, there were more ups than downs. If you were a student...maybe not so much?
When you get your cell viability results back...
....and you realize you made cancer stronger.
Despite the unexpected results of some of our data, I found the research/analysis part of Mod 2 to be really fun. I've heard before that some of the most amazing scientific discoveries started with a researcher saying "huh, that's kinda funny..."
This is not to say that Mod 2 was an extraordinary scientific breakthrough for the cancer field. In fact, if our research articles were to be peer reviewed by non-109ers, the most common response we'd probably get would be "are you suuuuure BRCA2 mutations made cancer cells more resistant to etoposide??" Because trust me, this is EXACTLY what I was thinking when I was trying to write my Mod 2 report. Despite this unexpected result, I thought that some of our other unexpected results were kind of cool. Like the fact that BRCA2 mutant cells are less sensitive to loperamide than BRCA2 WT cells. Who would have thought?!? If this result taught me anything, it's that 1) the cell cycle is super confusing and cells are really pretty crazy and cool in the ways they work, and 2) just because something seems almost guaranteed to work based on logic/the literature, it doesn't mean that it actually will! Because our results weren't what we expected, I definitely had to do a lot more reading/exploring to come up with a hypothesis for WHY this wasn't the case. Had everything worked out perfectly, I don't know what I would have written about for 14 pages.
That being said, writing the Mod 2 report wasn't exactly a breeze. I kept getting new information or realizing new conclusions (mostly about cell cycle activity) that caused me to have to revise my whole "story." I feel like I rewrote my discussion about 4 times before I was finally happy with the conclusions I came to. And if there's one thing I haven't improved at since Mod 1, it's formatting figures.
When you mess up your figures for the 2,340,398,321st time:
When you mess up your figures for the 2,340,398,322nd time:
Perhaps the hardest part of the research article, was coming up with a title.
Me at 9:59 pm:
Needless to say, my title was a bit longer than expected. Oops.
Overall I really enjoyed Mod 2, specifically the research and the data analysis. I definitely didn't enjoy writing the research article that much, mostly because it was stressful and not really exciting. Getting your data back and analyzing it is exciting, because you're learning new things about the system you're testing and potentially making discoveries no one has before. On the other hand, by the time you're on your 7th revision, you pretty much hate the words "DLD-1," "BRCA2," and "etoposide."
I'm both sad and excited that Mod 2 is over, but I'm sure Mod 3 will be every bit as fun (yay for making batteries).
-Jenna Melanson
When you get your cell viability results back...
....and you realize you made cancer stronger.
Despite the unexpected results of some of our data, I found the research/analysis part of Mod 2 to be really fun. I've heard before that some of the most amazing scientific discoveries started with a researcher saying "huh, that's kinda funny..."
This is not to say that Mod 2 was an extraordinary scientific breakthrough for the cancer field. In fact, if our research articles were to be peer reviewed by non-109ers, the most common response we'd probably get would be "are you suuuuure BRCA2 mutations made cancer cells more resistant to etoposide??" Because trust me, this is EXACTLY what I was thinking when I was trying to write my Mod 2 report. Despite this unexpected result, I thought that some of our other unexpected results were kind of cool. Like the fact that BRCA2 mutant cells are less sensitive to loperamide than BRCA2 WT cells. Who would have thought?!? If this result taught me anything, it's that 1) the cell cycle is super confusing and cells are really pretty crazy and cool in the ways they work, and 2) just because something seems almost guaranteed to work based on logic/the literature, it doesn't mean that it actually will! Because our results weren't what we expected, I definitely had to do a lot more reading/exploring to come up with a hypothesis for WHY this wasn't the case. Had everything worked out perfectly, I don't know what I would have written about for 14 pages.
That being said, writing the Mod 2 report wasn't exactly a breeze. I kept getting new information or realizing new conclusions (mostly about cell cycle activity) that caused me to have to revise my whole "story." I feel like I rewrote my discussion about 4 times before I was finally happy with the conclusions I came to. And if there's one thing I haven't improved at since Mod 1, it's formatting figures.
When you mess up your figures for the 2,340,398,321st time:
When you mess up your figures for the 2,340,398,322nd time:
Perhaps the hardest part of the research article, was coming up with a title.
Me at 9:59 pm:
Overall I really enjoyed Mod 2, specifically the research and the data analysis. I definitely didn't enjoy writing the research article that much, mostly because it was stressful and not really exciting. Getting your data back and analyzing it is exciting, because you're learning new things about the system you're testing and potentially making discoveries no one has before. On the other hand, by the time you're on your 7th revision, you pretty much hate the words "DLD-1," "BRCA2," and "etoposide."
I'm both sad and excited that Mod 2 is over, but I'm sure Mod 3 will be every bit as fun (yay for making batteries).
-Jenna Melanson
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