Getting to Know the Site (and Lots of Forms)!

Yesterday I was taken on a quick tour of the site, but I did not completely appreciate the enormity of the John Innes Centre, by the sounds of things tomorrow I will see even more of it. This site is massive!

Bedtime reading apparently!

I got the bus on time and didn’t even lose my way, there was no panicking or worrying this morning, hurrah! It looks like I’m settling into this internship a lot better than expected!

However, this morning was not as exciting as one would expect from such a huge company. I spent the whole morning filling out Health and Safety forms and being told all the proper procedural stuff checking the fire exits and what to do in emergencies etc. etc. This took a lot longer than expected as other people needed to sign forms for me in order to allow me access into their buildings.

Not my photo, but this is them!

Fortunately, lovely Liz helped me with this and chased up the necessary people for me as I barely know anyone. While she was on her way to see all these people I tagged along and explored a bit more of the buildings on campus. She showed me the greenhouses where they grow all sorts of things from basic crops to transgenic ones and all the different equipment and lab coats they wear there. We also passed the entomology labs where they keep all the insects. Louise told me as we passed that they have very strict procedures here, probably because they don’t want cross-pollination of species or a predator insect interacting with a prey and destroying it! These procedures are apparently so rigid that several different types of lab coat must be worn at once! I was later told a bit on the history of the centre, why and how it was formed. There was a lot of information here that was actually very interesting, including a lot of people from the likes of John Innes himself to others like Robin Holliday (Holliday Junction), please check out the website for more thorough detail as I’m sure I couldn’t get through it all in one blog post!

After the delightful tour of the inside buildings we went outside and I was shown the pea cage with a visual phylogenetic tree of the history of peas and their genetic differences. This was especially interesting as Mike is heading this research so I’m sure I will be able to get into detail on this too. We also passed the field where they did trails on GM potatoes and we discussed what was done there at the time as it was very controversial, there are large fences and it is quite a high security area still!

In the afternoon I got on with more requests from people for access to the germplasm resource and heard more funny stories from Louise about everything that goes on at JIC.

Almost as bad as my passport photo!

After all the forms and admin this morning, I now have my own John Innes email address and a lovely ID card to get me through all the doors necessary for my stay without being escorted! This means that I can arrive at the centre earlier or later if I want to, leaving me to be flexible. This is a great feeling as it means that if someone needs my help at 9 am I can be there for them!

I am told that we we will be visiting the field sites tomorrow to take a look at this year’s crop and hopefully to label and reference it. This incredibly needs a car to get around, it’s that big! Moreover, I’m told to be weary of motion sickness as it is a large field of crop that sways in the wind and can make you dizzy and disoriented, apparently I have to look for a horizon as the plots go on for miles! How weird! I can’t wait to experience what that’s like!

My First Day at John Innes Centre

After settling into my new temporary home in Norwich last night, I found myself all set up for my first day on the job as a student volunteer in the crop genetics department at John Innes Centre (JIC).

However, last night I did not have a great sleep and it was all my fault, the worrying gene came into action again. I woke up every hour throughout the night despite the house feeling homely, the bed feeling comfortable and the surroundings quiet. What can I say? My mind just finds a way to stress me out!

My tickets there and back, I was mistaken for a teenager!

Anne (the owner of the AirBnB room) could clearly tell I was nervous this morning because she went out of her way to make me feel comfortable. She told me where to find everything for breakfast and even walked me all the way to the bus stop and stayed with me until I left. She is such a kind and gracious host, I am so glad to be in this room and not a monotonous hotel where I would be one of many.

My JIC week pass!

So I got onto the bus and it was such a great service! Despite all the traffic, I was there in 20 minutes and in the reception building signing myself in within 45 minutes of leaving the house! I must remember the way, I don’t think I’ll feel comfortable I won’t miss my stop on the bus until next week. At the reception the kind staff signed me in for a weekly pass and let me sit in the chairs to read my book while I waited for Mike Ambrose, manager of the Germplasm Resource Unit (GRU) to arrive.

Outside the GRU

I spent a lot of my time saying hello to people throughout the day, but I think my longest and most interesting welcome was from Mike Ambrose himself. I was taken to the GRU through the vast campus of JIC buildings and sat down at his office chatting about my interests and experience in this field. He then showed me the glasshouses and told me all about everything that was growing there and why it was important! It was great to hear what the centre was all about  and the huge range of clients that they cater for, from schools and artists to other scientists and companies!

Some of the historical wheat varieties grown and harvested here.

I was later informed that a request had been made by an artisan baker for heritage wheat seeds so that he could make loaves of bread similar to those they did with the older wheat varieties years ago. Depending on the quality of the bread product made, the baker will then choose a few wheat varieties to grow so that more of this can be made easily. “That’s what it’s all about” I’m informed by Mike, it’s not about blocking off the seeds from public use once they’ve been conserved. It’s about conserving them through public use and letting anybody that wants to, access to the germplasm resources here and utilising the seeds for their proper uses!

Seeds taken from the cold storage.

I was to be a part of that project and my job after the mid-morning tea break was to collect the varieties from cold storage, measure them out, remove debris from the sample and package them away. But first I was off to meet more people in the café during the break. I set off with Liz, a lady who who works at the GRU, and Louise, a first year university student who has been doing internships here since she was 16, to meet their friends and colleagues. At around 10:30 am they all set off to drink coffee together, chat and complete the times crossword puzzle together. I said hello to everyone and even managed to contribute to the puzzle “11 down, Tom Hanks film (7,4)…. Forrest Gump!!!”

To the untrained eye, this is a perfect batch…

After a good try at the puzzle and a bit of a natter we all headed back to work. I started off into cold storage (1.5C) though it wasn’t as cold as the Millennium Seed Bank with Louise to find the seeds and collect them for counting. This was the easy part, the removal of the debris and weighing, however, proved not to be. It took hours to remove the husks of wheat from each other and the seeds then sorting them into the correct bags.

The Norwich Research Park

Though, with all work like this it is actually quite therapeutic, it gives you a lot of time to think and to get talking to other people. It was great actually, I was sat with Louise sorting through these seeds asking her about her experiences at university and how her work over the past few years there had gone. I felt as if we were in the early stages of a work friendship, it was nice! She told me what all the buildings in the area did and all the interesting things that I should look out for while I’m here. I think she’ll be a very useful guide while I get to know the place!

Me in the GRU after the first day at work!

At lunch Mike showed me the different cafeterias and the new Centrum research park space for visitors. The food was surprisingly cheap for the quality, only £3.60 for a premium deli BLT with fries, and it was delicious! I sat down with Mike as we chatted about the centre and a quick overview of how we each got to where we are. We had a surprising amount in common, one particularly interesting fact was that he used to live in Horsham, just the next town from me! My, my, it is a small world indeed!

Joining the commuters at the bus stop.

After lunch I continued helping people out with their work and had a great time of it. I’m told that everyday is different here so that should keep it very interesting! I left the JIC campus at around 5:40pm and headed off back to the city centre after what seemed like a very short day. It must have felt so short because I was having lots of fun meeting new people and getting to do new things! It seems like such a great place to work, I can’t wait!

Funny huts in the city!

A dragon sculpture outside one of the many churches I found.

Apparently, I don’t have to be in until 9:30 am tomorrow morning, so hopefully I should get a good lie in tonight and catch up on all the needed sleep! So after work I joined the queue for the bus and headed for a bit of an explore around the city centre for a bit of culture and food before I headed back for a rest and shelter from the rain!

One of 5 churches on my walk back.

All in all, my first day was amazing! I was welcomed with open arms and I am so happy to be at such a great company and with lovely people!

Keep reading my blog everyday for more updates on the kinds of work I am doing and how I am getting on in the east of England!

What are the main steps in creating a genetically modified plant?

As I am going to be doing an internship in crop genetics next week, I thought I would explain a little about the further work on creating a genetically modified organism using data similar to what I will be collecting in summer. This is an extract of an essay I have previously written on the subject.

We know very little about the genes required to enhance yield, have tolerance to drought, flooding and other stresses.

Simply identifying the gene required is not enough, research must be undertaken to understand the interaction between genes, such as the multiple genes with several changes that are required for crops to be able to withstand global warming. This discovery needs to take place before any GM methods can be implemented.

Once the desired gene has been isolated, and cloned into a suitable bacterial vector then, a promoter sequence needs to be added to the gene of interest to ensure that it will be correctly expressed in the right place and then recognised by the rest of the sequence.

The method that makes transgenic plants, is the most commonly used, Agrobacterium-mediated transformations, and involve taking the Ti plasmid from an Agrobacterium tumefaciens bacterium that has a large TDNA section, named because it transfers its DNA into the host, which is cut with a restriction enzyme. This cut Ti plasmid is then incubated with the allele of interest that has complimentary “sticky ends” to the restriction site. This then forms a recombinant Ti plasmid, it is this which is introduced to the plant cells in a culture and the plant grows with this new feature from the allele.

Another method of gene transformation into plants is the micro injection method using a “gene gun” that injects the cells with DNA particles coated with the desired gene and bombarding the cells with this. The plant chromosomes are then integrated with the desired genes and the cells multiply to form a plant with the new features.

My Day of Packing

I should call this title ‘my day of panic’, but I’ll leave that ’til tomorrow!

For those of you that don’t know, tomorrow is University of Birmingham’s results day and oh my gosh am I panicking! Some of my friends on other courses have got their results back already and celebrating! They’ve all done so well, so I’m panicking thinking I’ll be the failure of the group. I am such a worrier!!!! I am so happy for them, I just hope I can join in the celebrations tomorrow. In all honesty, I have worked my hardest ever this year, I’m not even sure my brain could have taken in any more information without completely shutting down! So my results should be an honest reflection of the hard work I have put in, hopefully it will all pay off.

Anyway, so I’m off to Birmingham tomorrow and then following my family up to Liverpool for the weekend before I go off to my internship in Norwich, eek, exciting! I live in the South East of England, so my day tomorrow is mainly travelling starting at 8 and finishing at around 4pm, when hopefully my parents will pick me up in Liverpool and buy me a strong drink!

As you can imagine, this all involves a lot of careful preparation and packing, one bag for this, one bag for that etc. So here I am at 10:30pm frantically stuffing things into suitcases, hoping I’m taking everything I need. I have been packing for hours today, slowly getting things out of my wardrobe and deciding what to take with me. There was a trip to Tesco this morning where I frantically looked around for anything else I might need to buy, followed by a trip to town with my friends this afternoon, where I wondered how much sun cream I would need to take. My latest indecision is what type of shoes I should be wearing and how many pairs to take. I think I’ll be walking around a lot in London catching tubes and trains tomorrow so comfortable shoes are a big priority!

I always leave something behind, let’s just hope this time it isn’t my brain!

My Surprise Work with University Of Brighton

Last year, after I had been working at the Millennium Seed Bank for a while I attended a cousin’s wedding. It was a great ceremony and I had loads of fun with my family. During the evening celebrations a family member who works for the University of Brighton as a researcher and lecturer asked me to help him with his summer research. I was shocked, this was great news! A proper paid job, finally!

So, in September, after I had finished my Kew summer placement, I started work as a research assistant at the University of Brighton. Although I am an easy train ride away from the campus, I never actually had to go to the university. The job involved travelling all over the UK to several different sites that had been predetermined. This was a lengthy process and took 2 weeks on the road, most of this time was spent was travelling from site to site, we even went as far north as Scotland! By the end of our travels, we knew all the lyrics of the top 40 hits as they were played repeatedly on the radio.

The greatest part of my work here was enjoying the experience of using specialist equipment and knowledge of environment gained in University studies in real life work. The work I was a part of was for the Geoinformatics department where we were measuring the canopy coverage of trees in UK woodlands.

The reason that there was no high-tech computer to do this for us, was in fact that we were testing that the satellites in space were actually working. If we could prove that they could work, the data from these satellites could be used to inform the government and significant environmental agencies. However, despite testing the satellites, there was plenty of other high-tech equipment that I could get my hands on from cameras to LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) equipment. However, we did occassionally have to use a map and compass to get to the site.

It was all incredibly important work, that I am so proud to be a part of!

Freezing (-20C) in the Middle of Summer!

When I arrived on my first day of placement last year, I really had no idea what to expect, or how much I would be allowed to contribute to the project. It turns out, quite a lot!

The largest and smallest seeds in the world.

I dissected seeds that had been incubated and observed under the microscope why they had not grown. It was usually due to mould, infestation or that they were simply empty pods. This took a lot of getting used to as some of the seeds were extremely dense and hard to crack open, others were invisible to the naked eye!

Others may call this boring or tedious work, but I found this absolutely fascinating! Just like any other living organism, no two seeds are identical, and it was fascinating to look down a microscope into a whole new world of textures and colours!

Another part of my job was to grow these seeds into plants, the UK native species could be grown in greenhouses for other projects, whilst due to pest and invasive species laws, foreign seeds could only be grown in specific incubators, with some even under quarantine conditions. It was so fun to see them grow over time and literally watch my hard work pay off in front of me. I was also allowed to grow some illegal seeds such as those from the opium family for research purposes. However, don’t get too excited for me, due to the regulations of the site these seeds had to be destroyed after a specified time and our lab coats were taken off us every day to be cleaned.

During my summer-long placement at the bank I was involved in several different projects. One of the most complicated projects involved growing species to a large seedling under different growing solutions, keeping track of their growth every week. After 8 weeks, I then removed them from where they were grown in the nursery greenhouse to take photos and upload all the data to a massive excel sheet for my manager to write a report on. I was fully in charge of the photos and of the spreadsheet data and I was extremely proud to be able to apply myself fully in a workplace!

The vault door

Overall though I can definitely say that the highlight of my time at the seed bank was going into the huge nuclear bomb-proof vaults deep below ground level. To get into the vaults there was a set of 3 doors to get through. The first was huge, extremely heavy and difficult to open. Because of this, the first door was opened during specific working hours for the workers to get easy access to it. The second door (almost as heavy as the first) was secured shut and could only be opened with a pass to swipe through. The final door was the easiest to open and was more like a refrigerator door maintain the controlled humidity and temperature of the main vault room. This first room contained all of the lab equipment needed to count, weigh and analyse the seeds as well as storing gloves, hats, coats and shoes for the Arctic weather inside the bank storage. The main room was cold, but bearable with a lab coat on. However, due to the controlled humidity, I could only stay for around an hour, otherwise you literally dry out!

Yes, we really did have to wear these!

So, there I was in the middle of the summer with a massive coat on, ready to hit -20C to collect the week’s experimental seeds from storage. This was an incredibly difficult job to a newcomer, the seeds were stored by numbers and there were rows upon rows of shelves filled with mason jars and test tubes full of the things. As I stepped in, I had to activate an alarm to alert anyone if I had been in there for more than 10 minutes. It is extremely cold and dangerous to be in there for longer. The alarm is not for the crazy who don’t feel cold, but as a warning in case I tripped and was knocked unconscious down there alone, if I had to call for help, there’s no way anyone would be able to hear me!

This Dream Placement wasn’t wasted, it really did turn out to be a dream come true. I thoroughly enjoyed the work I got to be a part of and the chilled atmosphere of my colleagues was especially welcoming. I hope to volunteer my services once again, or even to work for them one day!

Getting My First Dream Placement!

So yesterday I mentioned that I have asked for my tutor’s help in finding summer placements, well my help came about by somewhat of a surprise…

In my first year of University we all had to sit down with our tutors and have a quick 5 minute chat to get to know each other and talk about everything we were interested in. When it came to my turn I explained that I was always interested in plant sciences and conservation (the genetics part didn’t come ’til later) and that I had previously tried to apply for work experience in a place 10 minutes away from my house called Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank. This place was always fascinating to me as a child and I had always dreamt of working there.

Some of the legumes (beans) of the collection

You see, my family went for walks every weekend (and still do) as members of the National Trust. Wakehurst Place, the National Trust’s most visited property, is managed by Kew, a company with keen interests in seed use and conservation. Kew set up a project in 1996 called the Millennium Seed Bank Project (later Millennium Seed Bank Partnership) to try and conserve all of the world’s plant species as an insurance policy against future extinction.

The Wellcome Trust Millennium building, housing the large -20C storage freezers and rows of labs and incubators, was opened in 2000 on the Wakehurst Place site, so I passed it every weekend from when I was just 5. This had great impressions on me growing up and educated me a lot about the importance of plants in our world.

Unfortunately many of the crop wild relative seeds that could be of great use in agriculture are in war-torn countries, such as Afghanistan, so there is no safe way of collecting them to bring them back to the bank. However, the bank holds around 15% of the world’s total seeds, and if that doesn’t seem enough to you, you must be crazy as there’s over a billion as of 2008! This number is growing every day and the current aim is to have 25% of the world’s plants by 2020. This involves a lot of work from incredibly hard-working scientists that test them for viability, properties and grow them, not to mention the partners of the project who travel all over the world to collect them.

The amount of seeds in the bank is ever expanding and the process of cleaning, drying, freezing, x-raying, testing and growing is a long one! This is where I came in, (anyway) getting back to the beginning of my story, as I mentioned this keen interest to my tutor, he leaned back in his chair and chuckled, explaining that he was actually an honourary fellow there and could get some voluntary experience for me there. I paused with shock, I was so excited, the place I had wanted to work at for most of my life was finally within reaching distance!

I thanked him, ran outside and called my dad to tell him the exciting news!

The Importance of Networking

As many other students know, internships are vital to being able to get a job after University. A degree isn’t nearly enough, you need a top qualification, a good personality and lots and lots of experience.

The first is standard, everyone tries their best to get that first at the end, and trying your best is all you can really do, working hard repeatedly all year, and don’t panic on the day of the final exam… obviously! The second is all about selling yourself and here at the University of Birmingham, the Careers Network put on an immense number of seminars and talks. These aren’t useless or boring, they educate you on key points to address in interviews if you don’t have the natural flair of confidence.

UoB Biosciences Building

So that’s it, the first two sorted, the last one however, many people find incredibly difficult to come by. It’s not that you aren’t clever enough to find an internship, it’s just that there are thousands of other people also looking for the same thing. In biosciences it’s slightly easier as there are several specific topics to choose from ranging from food standards and microbiology to plant sciences, conservation and genetics giving you the opportunity to work for loads of different companies. However, for many it’s really all about networking and the people that you know.

I urge everyone to do this while they have time at University. Go to all the careers events for your course, get friendly with the lecturers, join a society that interests you, get to know what others on your course have done.

There are so many people that are passionate about your subject that work at the university and want to talk to you about it, so why not give it a try? Once you’ve found someone, you pretty much have a way in! Obviously don’t rely on them fully, do research yourself, but hopefully if you get chatting to them about your real passions, they’ll have a way to get you a good bit of experience.

Luckily for me, my personal tutor is someone who is very passionate about a subject similar to mine. I have been able to talk to him about lots about different internship opportunities and the path I should be looking at to get to where I want to be in the end.

Find that person and get chatting!