RhyanVillanueva's Blog

First Blog of the Semester February 5, 2010

Hi, everyone!!!!

This is my first post on the 2010 Year. I have to tell you that there have been some changes since the last semester. Unfortunately, the graduate student that I was working on the Microbial and Biochemical Laboratory is not able to supervise undergraduate students. After several meetings with Dr. Ortiz, she told me that I have done and excellent job in her lab but for situations beyond her control, I will not work anymore in the MBT.

Great news!!!! Dr. Carlos Rios from the Biology Department accepted me on his research laboratory. On the several laboratory meetings attended, students have been talking about their research and a very important security workshop has been performed.

I have always been passionate for biosciences, although I am a Chemical Engineering major. This is the reason why I propose Dr. Rios to be my research mentor and to work on his prestigious laboratory: Microbial Biotechnology and Bioprospecting Laboratory. During these weeks, I have been on what it is called a “shadowing experience” in which I see the lab mates working in their respective areas. The purpose of this is to know which research topics I like most and off course that I will love to work on!

I have seen many wonderful projects and I have asked several questions about them. In addition, in the lab there are weekly meetings in which students present their status of the proyects. Also our lab realizes monthly journal clubs open to the public. On the last one, two professors from the Biology Department presented their research that will be published soon!

In one of the laboratory meetings, I was able to tell Jose Cruz that I was interested on his research and he told me, because of the large size of his research project, that he had several areas that need someone to continue expanding them. I agreed immediately. His research deals directly with looking for antibiotics using metagenomics. Currently I am investigating for Dnase activity on the metagenomic sub-pool from the Yunque & Guanica forests.  This is a totally new area for me, and I found it very interesting. I am learning a lot in the laboratory and the literature search. My laboratory experience has been very positive; all of my lab mates are good persons and also top students (one of them was accepted on MIT Graduate School, I hope I will be accepted too!!!).

My mentor and I have established some objectives for this semester. The first objective is to isolate the responsible gene and protein for expressing Dnase activity. Another is to characterize the gene and its product. Last but not least, to sequence the gene, and to characterize the protein structurally and kinetically.