Saito Lab
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
November 2022 -
In Woods Hole, I learned how to synthesize peptides from scratch, hung out around cool mass-spectrometers, and met many amazing researchers and innovators - Full blog to come!
On my first day at WHOI I was greeted by a disassembled Q-Exactive Orbitrap mass spectrometer that was being repaired. I had only seen these mass-spectrometers intact and collecting data at core facilities, so it was a great learning opportunity to see the inner workings of such intricate instruments. The Saito lab uses this mass spectrometer for proteomics measurements.
During my stay, I learned how to design plasmids, transform E. coli cells with these plasmids, and then harvest and purify the proteins that are produced as a result of this transformation. This procedure allows researchers with a standard set of laboratory tools to synthesize peptide standards to quantify proteins of interest - I'll write more on this technique and its utility soon!
My daily bike ride along the beach from Falmouth to WHOI
My very own coffee card at the Buttery, the campus canteen
Stanley W. Watson Laboratory
Bumpy sailing around Woods Hole
Thank you!
I could not have wished for a more welcoming and accommodating group of people throughout this trip. Thank you to Dr. Mak Saito for being a wonderful host. Thanks to Mat, Paloma, Maggie, Rebecca, Emily, Dominique and all the other students and researchers I met at WHOI, who were a pleasure to be around and extremely patient with all my questions. Thank you to the Buttery staff for keeping me caffeinated, and to the stranger who took me out sailing around Woods Hole. Thank you to the Kimberley Foundation and Hugh Morris Fellowship for making all this possible.