On Tuesday, August 6th I worked with Dahlia on running TotalBac and looking over our other data. On this day we met at 11 AM and continued until 5 or so. The day went by fast and was uneventful.

On Wednesday, August 7th Dr. Gedalanga showed us various scientific posters from his previous students that he has worked with. I loved the research posters he showed us and got inspired to start on mines. He gave a lot of good input on how we can make an outstanding one on our own.

On Thursday, August 8th, Dr. Gedalanga did not show up. I started my day at 10 AM and immediately started working on a report for a fellow undergraduate researcher. After a few hours on the report, I began gathering data from the PCR machine to put on my research poster. I left early that day around 1 PM to work on my research poster at home.

On Monday June 29th, I only spent an hour or so in the lab and worked on my excel sheet to record my micropippertting data. After that hour I went home.

On Tuesday, June 30th, I did a part of the well for qPCR. The data came back and I did astounding. I was proud of myself.

On Thursday, August 1st, I met with Dr. Gedalanga around 7 AM to go water sampling at the Santa Ana River. Since we went early we beat the scorching heat. I saw a adorable baby horse. Later that day I learned how to filter water and cut up the filter paper for DNA extraction. I was pretty tired so when I tried doing my qPCR set up I messed up. Hopefully I can try again next time. The day ended around 6:15 PM.

On Monday, July 22nd, I met with Dr. Gedalanga at our lab and was advised to finish my online training for laboratory safety. So I went to the library to work on my training. It was long and tedious, however, I finished. I proceeded back to the laboratory where Dr. G was and continued shadowing the water filtering and DNA extraction process. My day was rather relaxed so I enjoyed it and later that night I sent an email to Dr. G of my training certificates.

On Tuesday, July 23rd, I was finally allowed to work in the laboratory. I was given instructions to practice my micropipette skills. I was given deionized water to work with. I micropipetted numerous liquid amounts in milliliters (ml). The first experience with the micropipette I had I wasn’t as accurate as I wanted to be. However, the second micropipette exercise I did significantly better and was I very accurate in my skills. I was very pleased.

On Thursday, July 25th, for the majority of the day, I worked on the mid-program powerpoint presentation. In between, I did work on my micro pipetting skills. Next week I will see my results.

I think one subject my SRE partner and I had a challenging time agreeing on was which project to pick to focus on for this program. Dr. Gedalanga presented us with two different options to select from which were Microbial Source Tracking or Microplastics. I gravitated towards Microbial Source Tracking as I am fascinated by determining how to improve health inequalities that impact various populations. I wanted to know if the homeless population was causing contamination of the Santa Ana River and how it could potentially affect the waterways. With this project I wanted to utalize what I learned from the Microbial Source Tracking and apply it to a bigger picture, to see if it could be implemented to different water operations throughout the world.

On Tuesday, July 16th I accompanied Dr. Gedalanga to collect water at different locations throughout the Santa Ana River which mainly focused on areas of Riverside County. We went to four different locations and examined the water to observe and document: turbidity, water temp, high/low flow, and various observations we made at each location. We started collecting water around 9 AM and ended around 11:30-12PM. I appreciated the whole experience since this was the first time I had ever been allowed to help conduct research.

After we had collected the water I learned how the DNA was extracted from the multiple Santa Ana River samples. Several steps are involved and it is time-consuming, to say the least. I could not work in the lab since I did not have my lab safety training completed. However, this weekend I am doing a few modules so I can start next week.

For the first week of my Summer Research Experience, I finally got to meet with Dr. Gedalanga for the first time. My partner Dahlia and I both met with him on Tuesday, July 9th around 10 am to discuss some research he is currently working on. The two projects are (1) Microbial Source Tracking and (2) Microplastics which are found in ALL of our water sources.

Before this meeting, I had a limited understanding of water contamination and its effects on Public Health. Dr. Gedalanga gave me a great description of both in which he also stated that he wanted us to choose one to focus on for our Summer Research Experience. Below, I will write out a description of the two projects.

Microbial Source Tracking:

There is currently no new target just expansion of the ability to track the “finger-print.” Will will focus on HF183 which is a human marker to narrow down the source. Our target is to look at the community of microbes specific to the activity. In addition, we will also look at other sources of fecal contamination which include pigs, dogs, horses, and cows.

Microplastics:

Microplastics are currently found in all water sources and is measured in particles per 100L. Waste water treatment plants are currently the largest source of contimantion since they can only filter so much. CSULB and Colgate College/University are both working in conjuction with Cal State Fullerton on this project.

We will be visting the Santa Ana River next week to learn how water is collected.