At Longwood, everyone student is required to partake in some form of internship before they graduate. As a Biology major, one of the easiest ways to complete this goal is through a research internship with a professor. I was lucky enough to be able to join Dr. Erin Shanle’s lab during the Fall of 2017. This is where my love of research began by investigating the effects of cancer mutations on DNA damage response proteins using yeast as a model organism.
In the Spring of 2018, Dr. Shanle wanted me to dive deep into the literature to gain better background knowledge on the protein Mre11 in humans, yeast and cancer cells. In order to facilitate this, I wrote a literature review. I am not going to lie this was difficult to do as a fresh new college student at the time. I wrote this over the entire semester reading countless papers, going over drafts with Dr. Shanle, and then coming to a final product. What I didn’t realize at the time was that this literature review would not only help me with my future manuscript, but it also helped the other two research students that came onto this project to quickly get an understanding of what we were researching. Below is my literature review that I wrote during the Spring of 2018.
The Role of Mre11 in Human, Yeast, and Cancer Cells
From this research, I was able to participate twice in Longwood’s undergraduate summer research program called PRISM (Perspectives on Research In Science and Mathematics). Before both of these programs began, we were required to orally present our proposal plans for that summer at Longwood University’s Spring Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry. The first time I did this presentation, I was absolutely terrified because I was afraid of anyone asking questions that I was unprepared for. The next time I did this presentation I was still nervous, but I also knew that I knew what my research was on and that I shouldn’t worry about questions. This experience of PRISM and the proposal presentations were the best opportunities I could have ever had the chance to partake in. These have strengthened my presentation skills greatly. Below is my proposal PowerPoint that I presented at Longwood University’s Spring Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry in 2019.
Investigating the effects of cancer mutations on the MRN complex using yeast
Another skill that has been strengthened due to my research, is my poster presentation skills. Through this research I have presented 9 different times and 7 of those were by poster presentations. Not only have I mastered the ability to create beautiful posters, but I feel, at least for my research, that I have mastered how to present that to people as well. I love my research and have conducted every experiment that we thought was necessary, so I am very comfortable with communicating my results at multiple levels depending if I am talking with other like scientists, other professionals, or to the general public. Below is my final research poster that I will present at Longwood University’s Spring Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry in 2020.
Using S. cerevisiae to screen cancer mutations in the DNA damage response pathway