Blog 14: Independent Component 1

LITERAL

(a) I, Alissa Matus, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work.

(b) Books I used to complete my hours:

1) (“yellow book” in mentorship log) Fleming, Diane O., and Debra L. Hunt. Biological Safety: Principles and Practices. 4th ed. Washington, D.C.: ASM, 2006. Print.

2) (“red book” in mentorship log) Morgan, Judith Giles., and M. Eloise Brown Carter. Investigating Biology. 4th ed. San Francisco: Benjamin/Cummings, 2002. Print.

3) (“green book” in mentorship log) Reddy, C. A. Methods for General and Molecular Microbiology. 3rd ed. Washington, D.C.: ASM, 2007. Print.

Packets of info my mentor gave me (“mentorship packets” in mentorship log)

1) Guzman, Hector, Adelina Valido, Laura Duarte, and Karen Presmanes. "Estimate by Means of Flow Cytometry of Variation in Composition of Fatty Acids from Tetraselmis Suecica in Response to Culture Conditions." Springer Science+Business Media B.V., 10 Jan. 2009. Web. 24 Jan. 2013. 

2) De La Jara, Adelina, Hector Mendoza, Antera Martel, Cristina Molina, Laurette Nordstron, Vladimir De La Rosa, and Ricardo Diaz. "Flow Cytometric Determination of Lipid Content in a Marine Dinoflagellate, Crypthecodimiun Cohnii." Journal of Applied Phycology (2003): n. pag. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 27 June 2003. Web. 24 Jan. 2013.

I also visited this website’s interactive presentation about flow cytometry a few times while reading the packets my mentor gave me.

I’ve had a parent (my mom) sign off on all the times during which I have completed hours. (I will turn in the material log to my house teacher (Mr. Ogden) in person, because I can’t put my mother’s signature online.)

(c) Here is a log of my independent component hours.

(d) (This plan was not my original, but I spoke with Mr. Ogden the first week back from winter break about this new plan and got it approved.) For this component, I prepared myself for my mentorship in the agricultural biology labs at Cal Poly Pomona. Because there was (and still is) information that I had to learn in order to be productive during my mentorship, I read through three laboratory text books to prepare myself for lab work. Also, my mentor gave me some outside materials to read over, so I spent a good deal of time reviewing those lab reports for research.

INTERPRETIVE

The purpose of all this research and reading was to prepare me for my mentorship at Cal Poly. So far, I’ve only been able to do one of the forms of lab work that I read about, but, as a result of all my preparation time…

 (Algae streaked on a plate.)

(I streaked all the test tubes on the rack above!)

(A few more of the test tubes streaked are mixed into this rack. The hand is my mentor's.)

Tada! Healthy growing algae cells, ready to be streaked so that more pure colonies can be formed. Next week we’ll be creating more slants to put algae on, so I’ll be working with more test tubes and culture media. Also, my mentor is requesting a hood to use permanently so we can do our work in an uncontaminated environment.

Every time I read and logged my hours of reading I had my mother sign each log. In order to fully understand everything, I re-read most passages in the books or looked to resources online to help me understand unfamiliar terms.

APPLIED

My component gave me an incredible amount of insight into a molecular biologist’s job. Before all this research I had no idea there were so many things a molecular biologist had to keep in mind while performing their experiments – including safety, environment, and the tools being used. Also, so far the reading I’ve done has helped me immensely, so when my mentor mentions laboratory terms or explains how we’re going to be doing things, I’m not lost anymore! I can even hold a discussion for a good length of time about what we’re working on. I can safely and cleanly handle the algae cells that need to be grown (as seen above by their growth).