Research has been research and it's been great. I have been doing experiments after experiment...I LOVE IT!!!! It has been a great joy to make mistakes, and come up with a way to fix it or make new innovations to an experiment. So far my experimental goal was to take cells from a rat and mice tails and measure the cell vitality under cell culturing. This study is interesting because it is a known fact rats and mice live longer under calorie restriction than they do under
ad libitum (eating as much as wanted). The question that is posed states: "Will the cells of the rat or mice under calorie restriction live longer than those that are not?" So far, I have only worked on control cells in order to get a feel of the experiment and what to expect as a whole in terms of collecting data and following additional procedures. I was able to present my research at the University of Campinas which is only an hour away from São Paulo. Here are some pictures below:
Research presentation in Campinas, São Paulo, Brasil and I am with Susanna Torresi, who is one of the program coordinators in Brasil.
Cutting up the tails into very smalls pieces helps collegenase take the cells from the tails.
Aside from that I managed to celebrate my 21th birthday day in Brasil and it was great!!! I managed to celebrate it with my labmates and later with my church family. On my birthday itself, I managed to go to the Praça da Sé and took pictures with my friends from church (João Carlos and Priscila) in front of a big church there. They really helped me to enjoy Brasil and they really play a good role in my life.
This is the lab celebration.
This is the church celebration.
At the Praça da Sé with João Carlos and Priscila
Now, I have started classes at USP, where I am taking Biochemistry and Molecular Biology along with the research. I am working hard and doing well here. Pray for me as I continue this journey.
This is the lab celebration.
