Merrina presenting her cancer research at the State Science and Technology Fair of Iowa on March 30,2017 . She won honorable mention in Biochemistry and Society of In-vitro Biology Excellence Award.
My name is Merrina Lan. I am an 18-year-old science nerd and am currently a junior at Ames High school in Ames, IA.
As a little girl, I saw science as the explanation of all the fascinating things I see in life.
Darwin’s theory of evolution, the law of conservation of energy and so many fundamental principles previous scientists found satisfy my curiosity and encourage me to follow their path and unveil more unknowns.
In high school, I realized my interest in molecular biology and genetics so I did two short projects that ended up giving me several awards at the Western Iowa Science and Technology Fair(WISEF) and State Science and Technology Fair of Iowa(SSTFI).
However, I became aware that my research wasn’t very in-depth and insightful due to the short amount of time I was allowed to conduct them. Thus I decided to commit a lot of my free time on a research I truly care about and come up with valuable findings.
I contacted the genetics faculties of Iowa State University and found a mentor.We started a research project with several undergraduates to investigate some genes that haven’t been heavily studied by previous researchers. It is known that they are expressed in the zebrafish vasculature, so we want to know whether mutations can cause the fish to have new phenotypes and later track down their developments quantitatively.
The CRISPR-Cas9 technique was used to cut the genes and induce mutations of all kinds. At the same time, we will integrate reporter genes such as Green Fluorescence Proteins and Red Fluorescence Proteins to help us visualize the cells that had the desired mutations.
Our results could provide new insights to cancer formation and treatment.
At first, since I had few prior knowledge of college-level research techniques, I panicked by every new scientific term thrown at me and every trial that had no results. Science was no longer a fairytale with predicted happy endings as I though it would be. Nonetheless, I asked questions, self-studied new concepts, and redid my experiments.
One time, I was taught to use a software to check whether the sequences of the DNAs we made matched our designs. I was so confused by the different parts of the long DNA code and how to interpret them. The graduate students that helped me tried very hard to explain what I should do but I was not able to grasp the ideas.
I was so overwhelmed by my failures that I cried in the restroom. But soon I wiped off my tears and started over. I finally understood what I should do and I felt so proud.
Things like that continued happening, but my mentor never criticized me as he understood what a new biologist must go through.
My mistakes ranged from culturing bacteria with wrong broths to forgetting to add certain reagents.
Through learning from these mistakes and avoiding them in my future work, I have become resilient and independent. Frustrations in life will no longer stop me from moving forward.
Though my research hasn’t gotten very far, I have improved my communication skills by cooperating with teammates. My professor’s approving encouragements convinced me that science is the path I’ll follow in the future.
I’m fully prepared to conquer more challenges and become a better scientist.