Exciting News

I presented at the ASU West Symposium and ANAS Conference last week. Even though ASU West Symposium was quite slow, it did prepare my mind for the next day: ANAS Conference! I was so excited to travel to Las Vegas for this presentation. I had such a great time with fellow interns and mentor as we explored downtown Las Vegas and the University of Nevada. The poster presentation went well, even though I hardly had anyone at my poster (very sad). All in all, I am much more confident presenting my research at Metro Tech High School next week since I have done so twice.

Figure 1. Sharing my research about unknown bacteria in creosote bushes at the ASU West Symposium.

Figure 2. Presenting my research project at the ANAS Conference at the University of Nevada.

Final Poster

The semester is coming to an end and I forgot to mention my results for this research project. After looking at our data, the rural group had twice as many bacterial groups compared to the urban. In addition, the average number of Colony Forming Units (CFU) of the urban samples differed by about 70% (Figure 1). However, there is no significant statistical difference between bacterial species in urban and rural areas. More research and samples will need to be gathered in order to determine a statistical difference between the two groups. Other than that, I am content with my poster (Figure 2) and am excited to present at the University of Nevada! I wish my fellow interns the best of luck during their presentations and I hope we have a fun, safe trip!

Figure 1. The rural samples have a greater number of CFUs vs. the urban group and a slightly higher group diversity (2 more groups than urban).

Figure 2. Final poster for the Spring 2018 research project. 

Semi-Finished Poster

I seriously enjoy working on anything that involves presentations! I love making posters unique, nice to look at and easy to read. I’ve mentioned this before but I think this has to do with my past experience with graphic design. I definitely paid close attention towards this poster when it came to color, font, text size and text placement. (Figure 1). Unfortunately, I am not too sure about the color because it looks very similar to last year’s and I wanted to switch it up. Also, the placement of the results has not convinced me. I will continue editing and will post the final product!

Figure 1. My 2018 research poster (that may still need corrections).

Slow Weeks

To be honest, for the last couple of weeks, I have had difficulty writing blog posts about my research. I have not been performing DNA extraction since the first 2 extractions because they had similar results. Also, I am unable to perform PCR because I do not have the PCR primers. The primers (27F/1492R, V3F/V3R, V6F/V6R) were ordered this week and should be here in a couple of weeks. Once they arrive, I will then be able to perform PCR, continue my research and hopefully identify the unknown bacteria. In the meantime, I have been editing my research poster to present at the Arizona-Nevada Academy Conference on April 21, 2018.

Figure 1. The Arizona-Nevada Academy of Science and the Arizona/ Southern Nevada Branch of the American Society of Microbiology will host the 62nd meeting at the University of Las Vegas ("Joint Science...", n.d.). 

Joint Science and Mathematics Meeting. (n.d.). Retrieved April 05, 2018, from https://www.aznvas.org/meeting/details/