After all of our work in the spring leading up to this trip, we were all very excited to start working on our research projects. This morning we worked on some computer programming on a website called Rosalind (Yes, named for the true discoverer of DNA, Rosalind Franklin). We worked in a language called Python, which is primarily used for looking at massive gene sequences and focusing in on specific areas. None of us have had a lot of computer programming experience, so this was definitely a challenge for us. We had laughs and tears (mostly those), but we managed to make it through. Our bioinformatics teacher, Gabriel Vargas, arrived at about 11:30 this morning to take over. After lunch, we sat down and learned what was in store for us the next seven days. Each of us are going to design a research question that we can research using the internet data base IMG. We can look at a specific bacteria, environment, or even something else and see if IMG has a metagenome available for us to use in our research. One thing that we can do on IMG is compare the proteins in one metagenome to the proteins in another and see if they are similar, or if they are not. I'm sure as the week continues we will learn a lot more about how to use IMG and think of some great projects. Right now we are all really pumped to brainstorm ideas, so I'll leave it at this!
-Meghan (with some side comments from everyone else)
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