My Work Project

So today I met with two of my three supervisors, Elina and Sari. They explained more of what I was doing and gave me an overview of what the experiments, of which I am a part, are all about. So here is the shimmy:

There is a field experiment in Wisconsin that involves growing Aspen, Birch and Maple trees in 12 large areas designated in the field. Each circle is exposed to a different treatment of greenhouse gases: CO2, O3 (ozone), and ambient air. What our lab is asking goes as follows: how do trees respond to changes in environmental gas conditions? To find out, we look at gene expression. What genes get turned on or enhanced, or turned off and down-regulated when trees are exposed to high levels of toxic gases will tell us what proteins are being made and what molecular pathways are being activated in response to the greenhouse gas stress.

What gets more interesting is that CO2 is actually beneficial to trees as they need it to produce energy via photosynthesis. However O3 is very harmful, so by subjecting trees to both gases at once, we can also look at the interaction of these two gases and their effects on tree growth, leaf health and overall productivity. Would their effects cancel each other out? These are the questions being tackled in our lab.

So where do I fit into this large picture? Well, my particular role is to analyze what genes have been affected by the treatments. So I will extract the RNA from the leaves, purify it, amplify it and finally analyze it. It is that simple...sort of. The procedures can be complicated and very expensive to run. But I am sure that I will learn a lot even though at present I am not doing much. We will be using very modern techniques that can analyze thousands and thousands of genes at once (a microarray). It is very impressive.

So there you have it, my experiment in a nutshell! I am glad to see advancements in our field put to good use. Everyday we are finding out more and more about our environment and how to preserve it. And for me, it is nice to know that I am making positive change, no matter how small.