R you ready for Mod 2?


So far, Mod 2 has been very different from the Mod 1 days. Now, instead of FKBP12 and specific activities, we deal with RNA and gene expression.

All of this is super exciting! Cancer! Genes! R!

Wait. R?

Oh no. Computation.

The hardest part of Mod 2, at least for me, has been the R exercises. I am anything but an experienced coder and have only been exposed to some very basic computational techniques. Though R is cool because it focuses on analyzing RNA sequence data, I still have a hard time understanding the syntax and what it means, and how the produced heat maps or plots help us understand the data. But I know with practice this will become more intuitive.

And the data will be exciting!

But before we collect the data for Mod 2, we first practiced how to present the major findings of a scientific paper.

Oh no. A presentation.

Although I am not a big fan of public speaking, and certainly have a harder time presenting technical or scientific information, the journal club presentation was actually a lot of fun! I enjoyed the process of reviewing an article, constructing a slide deck, and then presenting the main conclusions to my classmates.

Before the process began, I was nervous about trying to read and extract the key points from a scientific article. I haven’t had a lot of practice doing so, but to my great surprise, the article I chose was super interesting and fairly easy to understand! I loved reading it and learning more about the mechanism of a specific cancer treatment!


 Also, the major findings of the study were fascinating! The researchers wanted to find the mechanism with which PARP inhibition causes weird disturbances in mitosis. They found out that the sister chromatids of cancer cells treated with PARP inhibitors cannot stay together! Cohesion was lost prematurely!


In my opinion, the researchers’ coolest finding was the inhibition of the PARP’s function wasn’t the cause of these weird phenotypes: inactive PARPs actually sterically blocked damaged sections of DNA, disrupting cell proliferation! I was fascinated by this discovery and how this blockage causes the loss of cohesion and causes cells to die!


I was so excited that I tried to explain this all to my parents who do not have a background in biology. I gave them an impromptu presentation and did my best to answer their many questions, but by the end, they understood (at least I hope) why these discoveries were so unique. I had fun teaching them about PARPs, cancer treatment and mitosis, and their feedback also helped me structure my presentation more effectively.


And again, the BE Comm Lab has been an amazing resource. Though I was only able to work with them for a half hour on my presentation, I received great constructive feedback on my slides that helped me enhance the structure of my presentation.

Though I was really nervous about giving the presentation, it was a great experience. Learning how to present to a scientifically literate audience will not only be useful in this class and future classes but eventually in the workplace or academia. I also appreciated the many questions from my knowledgeable classmates about the research that was done!

I have also enjoyed listening to other presentations and learning even more about cancer treatments in the context of DNA repair mechanisms and BRCA genes. By gaining more background knowledge on these topics, I be better able to understand, interpret and share the results of our Mod 2 experiments in a full research article.

I can’t wait for the next step with you guys! :)

- Marissa

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