Lyndsay Staley
Unfortunately, my Heteroplasmic Mitochondria project was picked up by a commercial entity whom we had asked for the sequenced genomes, but they beat me to the answer before releasing the sequenced genomes. I worked on another project involving Alzheimer’s disease genetics. I was able to do the initial analyses in a genome-wide association study of cerebrospinal fluid levels of 59 Alzheimer’s Diseaserelated analytes from the Rules Based Medicine panel in two independently collected and measured series (ADNI and Knight ADRC). Now I am working with these results to further our knowledge of the genes that cause AD. We will be writing paper(s) very soon. I have been able to present our progress in weekly lab meetings and I plan to present a poster at a Bioinformatics convention in the near future.
Working in the lab with so many professionals, and students who were learning along with me was such an amazing experience. I feel like I am much more capable than I was before I started, and I have learned so much. Dr. Kauwe always makes himself available to help in anything I need, and I can tell he genuinely cares about me and all his of his students. I feel like I can always go to him for help. ! Sometimes I wished I could have someone with me the whole time I was working, because everything was so new and I felt confused a lot of the time, but it helped me to grow and learn on my own.
It was very hard for me when my initial project on Mitochondrial Disease fell through. I was so disappointed. I did not want to come work in the lab anymore because I was so excited about my project, and it had a very special importance to me, and another company just took it from me even though I knew it did not mean as much to them as it did to me. I’m very glad that my friends, the Belnaps, were able to be helped along in their process, and if I brought any awareness to their cause then I’m happy. I wish I could have been the one to do it, but I’m glad I was able to help them in a small way. Having to find a new project and start over taught me what scientists go through all the time, and it made me stronger.
Thank you so much for being generous enough to allow me to have this experience. I have grown so much as a person and as a scientist because of this opportunity. I am so grateful.