The Lab: A 14 Yr-Old’s Perspective

A week after I arrived in Dallas, my sister took me to her lab where she does her experiments to get her PhD. During my time in lab, I learned a lot about what exactly goes on inside a lab and some of the processes scientists have to go through in order to build a successful experiment.

Hanging out with my sister in lab!

The majority of my sister’s lab work with flies in their experiments. Scientists who work with flies need to make sure that the flies have enough food to stay healthy and alive. In order to do that, scientists do something called “Flipping Flies”. One of the scientists in my sister’s lab showed me how to flip the flies and she even let me try to flip some flies.

Here are the steps for Flipping Flies:

• The flies are stored in special protective bottles so the first thing you have to do is bang the bottle on the counter in order for the flies to fall to the bottom. 
• Then, you take a new bottle that contains fresh food and remove the top. 
• You quickly remove the top that has the flies and put the mouth of the new bottle on top of the mouth of the bottle that has the flies in it. 
• Then you simply flip the two bottles so that the new bottle is under the old bottle. The flies are flipped into a new bottle with fresh food.

Tah dahh! You have successfully flipped flies!

Left bottle with the pink tape is the new bottle that I flipped the flies into. Right is the old bottle that will be tossed.

But wait… Don’t forget to close the new bottle otherwise the flies will escape. The process is quite the same:

• Quickly take off the old bottle from the top and put your hand on top instead because it is very important that you don’t lose any flies. 
• Then you use your other hand to put the lid of the new bottle on top and make sure that the lid is tightly fixed in so that the flies can’t escape. 

It was really interesting to see how people work with flies in my sister’s lab.

Next, my sister introduced me to one of her friends in a different lab. Lucky for me, they were doing a dissection on a mouse embryo. The student told me that he is interested in studying the development of kidneys. The best way to study development is to look at how the kidneys’ are developing in the mouse.

He pointed out to me the kidneys, the heart, the liver, the intestines and other organs. It was really cool seeing all of these organs in the mouse using the dissecting microscope.

Looking into the dissecting microscope as my  sister's friend points out the different organs to me! 

Overall, my experience in the lab was very interesting and informative. It was really cool to see some of the experiments the lab was doing and the different model systems that are used in biology to answer different questions.

~ Nayab