Final Blog Post

Throughout my whole experience, I really got a strong feel for what working professionally in a laboratory is like.  It is an experience way different than the labs we do in school.  I learned the first steps to developing a good aseptic technique in the lab.  If I want to work in more research labs, this is an important technique to develop.  This is one of my goals I had hoped to accomplish at the beginning of the year.

I also found the opportunity to design my own experiments.  While in sciences classes, we have designed experiments as a class, it is not the same when it comes down to yourself and the word document.  I did have my mentors there to help me, but I was faced with numerous questions that needed answers before further steps could be taken.  Questions such as what tools were needed and what precise measurements were needed.  These details are just details, but in the end they make a big difference in your results.  

Furthermore, I learned so much about mushrooms and fungi.  I never really understood how complicated this whole kingdom is.  In my mind, they were mostly just a food group.  What I knew about mushrooms could be summed up in two or three sentences.  Now, while I don't know as much about mushrooms as my mentors do, I have a small understanding of how mushrooms are structurally and how those components can help make improvements and advancements in science and technology.  

Reading scientific papers was challenging experience.  In the beginning, I had to learn how to read the papers and understand them.  Even now, there are a bunch of papers that are harder to read.  This was because there were a lot of terms and concepts I weren't familiar with.  Measurement notation was even strange to read.  Ways a tackled this problem included using Wikipedia and a dictionary.  However, the more papers I read, the more familiar I became with many of the terms.

While learning to read papers was difficult, the end result of learning new things was the most pleasant.  Learning about mycoremediation to different mushroom species to how a mushroom can regenerate nerve ends was all rewarding, even if getting through papers was difficult.  

Suggestions:

I can't really think of any suggestions.  Knowing presentation/poster dates a little sooner would be nice. 

Some advice for next year's interns...

If you are reading a scientific paper last minute, read the introduction and then the conclusion.  

When you begin to first work in a laboratory, its ok to be paranoid about contaminating everything.  Actually, you should be paranoid about contaminating anything.  That way you'll develop good aseptic techniques.

Never hesitate to ask questions.  When you are stuck or especially when you are curious. 

April 23 and 30, College Visit and Last Day :(

April 23, I was unable to make my internship due to a college visit that weekend.  However, I worked on my presentation over the weekend with Caroline.  We sent the presentation to our mentors for review.  The following Wednesday, Caroline was able to get more pictures for our presentation.

April 30 was my last day!  Courtney was unable to make it that day, however I was able to see her once more when she came to watch my presentation with Caroline.  Sarah and I took a few last minute pictures, one of her and a few of some nice, fresh looking mushrooms to replace the dry mushroom pictures.  Then we proceeded to practice my presentation.  We went to the old building to do this.  The old building is now really the engineer's building, so we went by a lot of building projects.
I asked Sarah a bit more about the types of engineers that worked at Ecovative and she told me they were primarily mechanical engineers.  Of course, I had to ask how many were women and not too surprisingly, there were none.  Even for a company such as Ecovative, there are just too few women mechanical engineers.  Sarah did say though, that the type of mechanical engineer they wanted at Ecovative were ones who could easily apply their skills physically.  Most engineers are able to design and build things with programming, but the ones at Ecovative not only programmed but built things themselves.

After practicing the presentation, for which Sarah gave a bunch of good tips, I left with an Ecovative t-shirt!

April 9,

Today was spent helping Sarah with a variety of tasks from making regrind to checking up on mushroom BTTR blocks.  They give me a lot of independents tasks now because I've been fully trained!  Before I left, Sarah encouraged me to apply for the paid summer internship position at Ecovative, which I will most definitely try.
After I finished all the task, we started talking about mushroom topics I could look into more.  One thing we briefly discussed was fungi taxonomy.  I found it interesting how fungi categorization has changed over time.  Fungi classification has been based off of spore prints and physical characteristics, but these methods soon proved ineffective with the discovery of more and more species.  These new species would hold similar but different physical traits so they had to classify species differently.  From my understanding, the phyla are classified by their methods of reproduction.  After that, fungi are classified by morphology, molecular techniques, and several other ways.  However, due to the fact that the classification changed several times, there are mushrooms with several names such as the following example:

Agaricus nidiformis 1844 Pleurotus nidfiformis 1887 Omphalotus nidiformis 1994 - current name

Images taken from http://www.anbg.gov.au/fungi/classification-names-identification.html

April 2

I spent the day in the lab, making regrind of P. ostreatus for my current experiment.  It turns out the P. citrinopileatus  (golden) didn't grow well enough in the grain bag to continue with the experiment.  We have to now order the two oyster species, the pink and golden oysters.  The two mushroom species probably failed to grow properly due to the way the strains were packaged.  Hopefully our next order will work.
Also, we decided that we wouldn't perform the experiment I designed dealing with the black mold and mycoremediation.  With the mold, it is possible to contaminate the lab, even using proper aseptic tools.  We don't want to risk that, and the main idea was to gain experience in designing an experiment.  I also learned a lot from this experiment I designed.  Not only how to design experiments but how to research information effectively, on top of learning about other peoples' research.  I found a lot of unexpected information that improved my understanding of mushrooms in the bigger health picture.  
I really liked this method of learning, so I am going to continue doing outside research to perform a smaller experiment.  I'm interested in maybe reading up more about hormones and more structural components of mushrooms.

Beneath is also a picture of a block Sarah gave me to grow.  This block has to examples of contamination on it.  The obvious one being in the very center is mold.  At the far right corner you see Rhizopus which is a type of parasitic fungi.  It can be deceiving at first because it is white and fluffy like regular mycelium.  However, as it grows you begin to see dark specks in the white, fluffiness.  
Surprisingly, this block did produce some fruiting bodies, but their wet weights were small.

March 12, Inoculation Day

Today, I spent most of the time inoculating grain bags with the mushrooms for the experiment with different oyster species.  Sadly, we are not going to be able to use Pleurotus djamor because the mushroom did not spawn enough on the plate.  You can see this on the picture below.  The very left plate is the normal Pleurotus ostreatus that we have been using for the other experiments.  In the middle is Pleurotus citrinopileatus which did not spread as much as P. ostreatus but enough for us to continue the experiment. The very right plate is P. djamor which clearly did not grow on the plate.

Inoculating the grain bags was another good review of aseptic techniques.  Furthermore, since I had only inoculated grain bags with Courtney before, it was a good experience to be doing it with Sarah.  I was able to see more ways of handling contamination.  This is good for me because it allows me to pick and choose methods that work best for me.

Over break, I am to finish the conclusion for the light vs. dark experiment.  The average of the total wet weight (the weight from the first flush added to the second flush) was greater for the light set than the dark set, not as we had predicted.  For both sets, the second flush yielded smaller oysters.  I don't believe much error came from contamination, as only three blocks were contaminated and two of those were from the light set.

March 5, Bio-future!

Today, I got to sit in on a meeting with Courtney for the Bio-future group at Ecovative.  This is just a small group of people working on projects that are not meant to be developed into products in the near future, but for further down the road.  The purpose of the meeting was for a few members part of this group to share what they were working on.  It was difficult to completely understand everything discussed, but as someone told me at the meeting, it only matters that I understood 10% of the material.  So long as I learn something new.  Among the topics included creating a new material for ice packs, something about a car engine, crystallization in the mushroom, and strength of mycelium blocks.

The project with the different oyster mushroom species didn't need any work this week.  We just let the plates containing the mushrooms grow, so that we can use them to innoculate grain bags next week.
I have been researching other mushrooms to use for the antibacterial experiment I want to do.  The three I will pick from are Hericium erinacus (Lion's Mane, Bearded Tooth Mushroom), Ganoderma lucidem (Lingzhi Mushroom), and Trametes versicolor (Turkey Tail).  All three have really amazing healing properties.

The Lingzhi mushroom has been traditionally used in Chinese medicine.  It has anti-tumor and immunotherapeutic (modifying an immune response--whether by making it stronger, restraining it, or instigating it--to treat a disease) properties.  I think this mushroom looks disgusting, but it is healthy!
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ganoderma_lucidum_01.jpg

This is the Turkey Tail mushroom.  Its very fitting.  This mushroom contains something called Polysaccharide K (PSK) which can boost the immune system and be used to treat cancer.  PSK has shown to be beneficial in treating gastric, esophaegal, colorectal, breast and lung cancer.  This too is a Chinese medicinal mushroom.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Stumpfungus.jpg

I think this mushroom is a winner for my project.  The Lion's Mane (also called the Bearded Tooth) mushroom has crazy properties!  It is also a traditional Chinese medicine and has been proven to have antioxidant effects.  It can also be used to treat gastric ulcers.  Currently their are lots of studies going into the anti-dimentia compounds of this specific mushroom.  This mushroom has been determined to stimulate animal nerve cell growth.  In my research I found a paper that experimented with this on rats.  Here is a link if you are interested: http://www.dl.begellhouse.com/pt/journals/708ae68d64b17c52,03ea8c440cfbb276,23c2fd3840f4e0c9.html
This is also an edible mushroom.  I believe I've eaten myself at some point.  I've known it as the Monkey Head mushroom.  Pretty yummy :)

http://www.mykoweb.com/CAF/photos/Hericium_erinaceus(nw-01).jpg

February 26, Solo Work!

I am still figuring out specific but important technicalities to my experiment.  As part of my method and procedure, I am going to dehydrate the fruiting body.  However with C. cinereus, once they release their spores, they turn goop and obviously it becomes impossible to dehydrate them.  So I am looking for another species of mushroom I can test on.
Despite still figuring out the small details, I was able to begin collecting A. niger, the black mold, by placing agar plates in contaminated areas.  This might not be the most efficient way of getting the mold, but it is convenient with the tools we have.  The plates will not be purely A. niger.  While working on this project, I am also starting another experiment with Sarah for her oyster mushroom kit experiments.  This time, we are looking into different species of oyster mushrooms and seeing how they can grow on the grow-it-yourself kits.  Along with Pleurotus ostreatus I will be testing Pleurotus djamor,and Pleurotus citrinopileatus.  They are both edible mushrooms.

Pleurotus citrinopileatus

Pleurotus djamor

                                   

Other than discussing upcoming projects, I spent the majority of this time helping prepare substrate for Caroline's straw experiment.  I was let loose to make the substrate by myself and boy was it intimidating at first.  I made substrate once or twice with Courtney and Sarah, so I had to recall the procedure.  It was a good thing that making substrate does not require aseptic techniques.  Straw was everywhere but after making a bag or two though, I got the hang of it and now I can confidently make substrate bags myself.