Hi Everyone!

My name is Jess and I'm also a junior Biology major. So Paul wasn't kidding when he said he makes really bad jokes- but it's ok to be dorky in lab :)

I guess I'll begin by picking up where Paul left off. This quarter we are working with the model organism Chlamydomonas reinhardtti - a form of green algae that look like tiny critters with flagella that swim! We'll subject them to different environments to see how it effects the organism. Afterwards, we'll obtain mRNA and use microarray technology, which is basically a tiny chip with spots of RNA or DNA to represent the genes in a genome, to figure out which genes are turned on or off at different stages of an organism. One thing that's really cool about this project is that we get to choose what variables we want to manipulate in the chlamy according to our own interests. It's pretty awesome!

Let Me Introduce Myself

Hey to all those reading this!

My name is Paul, and I'm a junior biology major. I am mostly known for my tendency to say really dumb jokes (sorry in advance!).

My good friend, Jess, and I were asked to write a blog on our experience in 'superlab' so that prospective students could get some sort of idea what life is like in the bio department.

So what's superlab???
Superlab is a course at haverford, in which students spend the whole semester working on two projects in the lab (the first half of the semester is designated for one investigation and the second half is designated for the other). It's really neat because of how much independence we get. At the same time, we have great faculty members available if we need guidance.

So what I am doing in superlab???
Well, this entry has gone on for too long already- I'll tell you in my next one!