Eric J. Ma’s Website

After a harrowingly frustrating weekend in the lab, I swear I will not go into the lab and do heavy-duty lab work anymore. At best it’ll be innoculations for overnights. That’s it.

Time to chill on the weekends buddy. Chill and wait. That’s probably better than actually doing lab work. Wait, just as the Israelites did for 3 days before crossing Jordan.

His music is absolutely helpful. I solved the binary bacteria problem today – finally!

There’s been a lot going on lately in my life, with the whole “getting ready for graduate school” being the main focus. Scholarship applications, school applications, canvassing for reference letters, trying to do research at the same time… it can all add up.

It sometimes feels that I’m in the midst of a rat race. An unwanted rat race. A race that I don’t really want to be a part of. It’s stressful, not enjoyable, and causes me worries. Worries that I’ll not be considered good enough. It makes my heart skip a beat, at times, when I recognize the stress of what’s going on.

But then I reflect, and realize, actually that skip of a beat comes from a guilty conscience. A conscience that wants to put the focus on “self”, on “me”, on “my own” achievement, “my own” reputation, “my own” research, “my own” accomplishments. That focus on “me” alone makes me worry that I’ll have so much at stake to lose.

However, I do know that I don’t have to worry about this anymore. The epiphany, as all epiphanies which happen to me, came in the washroom. I think I was showering. I just had to hark back and take a “God’s eye view” of things, and realize that when I stop focusing on myself, I release myself from the shackles of pride and conceit that tie me down. I become able to take pride in my work without being proud of myself. I become able to focus on service to others rather than servicing myself. I synergize with others with rather than advancing my own goals at the expense of others.

It’s taken a long, long while to realize this. Third year taught me a lot – there’s the whole “med school” rat race which I inadvertently had to get embroiled in if I wanted to go to the best graduate schools. People viewed me with suspicion, because an excellent “pre-grad” student would necessarily, due to the bell-curving, come at the expense of a pre-med student. Not forgetting, of course, that many Microbiology and Immunology students are considered “pre-med”. Then there was the whole thing with a research idea being “scooped” – I really hated that, and I still do, and I wish I had done my literature search better. Sometimes it makes me wonder, will I still come up with something good and novel anymore? But I know I cannot second-guess myself, because I know that “novelty” and “utility” are not the biggest measures of wisdom. I know of a better standard. Just gotta take the “God’s eye view” of things.

After getting home from groceries, I became my own kitchen technician. A good 2 hours of non-stop prep work, and it still isn’t done!

Just as PCRs can be run in the background while I do other experiments, so can boiling water and eggs for making egg salad spread. So, as I ran a “boiling water reaction” in the background, I also prepped the cilantro by chopping it finely in a food processor. And then as the “egg boiling reaction” proceeded downstream of that, I prepped another big pot of water for boiling the >1 year old frozen grapes to make them into grape juice. As the grapes boiled in the background, I set myself to making the egg salad spread.

Tomorrow, there’s the task of peeling and mincing the garlic and soaking them into olive oil, but I need another productive task to run in the background. Say… laundry, perhaps?

When (and “if” especially) I become a grad student at the best schools and an undergrad wants to work with me, I’ll interview him or her by asking him/her to do one of two things:

• Follow a protocol in the lab
• Cook with me

Following a protocol in the lab would tell me how well he or she is able to read instructions and follow them. Cooking with me, on the other hand, would tell me how creative he/she is and how cooperatively I can work with him/her. Contrary to popular thought, I would certainly be much more receptive to working with a student who chooses the second, as familiarity in the lab is trainable, but cooperativity and creativity isn’t always so.

Argh, so we got “scooped”. And not even while doing the project, but before we even did the bench work! Thankfully Paul caught this early… allows us to be flexible still…

Then again, I can take heart in knowing one thing. As an undergraduate being a part of an undergraduate team, our experimental approach matched what JC Anderson, CA Voigt and AP Arkin, did. To quote Paul, this is “I think it’s a testament to how well planned our project was that 3 of the best synthetic biologists in the world also thought of the same approach (theirs was a bit more elegant!).”

Well, I guess it’s back to the drawing boards.

I have had the privilege to meet with Dr. Martin Chalfie, Nobel Laureate (2008), one-to-one in an informal reception setting. I heard his opinions on basic and translational research, the importance of basic research and how it has been overshadowed too much by the emphasis on translational research. Then there were all the goofy stories of “oh-so-high-and-up-there” scientists and of course, the “oh-so-high-and-up-there” G. W. Bush’s antics in the White House.

But really, meeting with Dr. Chalfie let me know that whatever science I do, there has to be a human touch to it. There has to be us emphasizing that science is the tool, and how we use the tool is what determines whether the tool was put to good use or not. I have to consider best human practices, moral issues to the knowledge that I am uncovering, and only by taking a stand for the better good can I become a more wholesome scientist, one who does care about the implications and directions of humanity.

I also learned that whatever science I do, I must not neglect the basic aspects of the knowledge being uncovered. Applied science, and translational research is one of them, is a really important, but without the foundational knowledge that underpins the applications, there would be no translational research. That importance cannot be underscored any more. Basic research is like the roots of a tree, which must hold firm before applied research, the fruits and branches of the tree, can bear any fruit. I just hope I never forget this point.

Finally, I learned that the Nobel Prize is really awarded to an idea, and that while certain members of the scientific community are awarded it, the award really goes out to all who helped advance the idea. GFP was certainly used by many scientists, but only 3 were picked, and to paraphrase Martin’s own words, he was just one of the lucky ones who applied GFP in his work who managed to win the prize.

Well, all in all, I’m very honored to have met a Nobel Prize winner face to face, to have chatted with him in person, and to have interacted with him. I hope there’ll be more things in store for Martin as he continues to advance his work in C. elegans. I also hope I get to meet more!! =D

The rush is there. Every time I look at the judging criteria, I think about how I can help motivate this team to work towards a more complete, a more holistic project than just what we are doing.

I’m a competitor at heart. To place things within the framework of a competition really gets me going. I think about ways that we can improve, improve to better other teams. I think of ways that we can get the team’s tasks divvied up to give ownership of that part to a particular person.

The Berkeley team did a pretty good job. They had different people working on different aspects of the project, and different chores/duties to each person as well. I wonder how the team dynamics for us will pan out.

They also had a section where they acknowledged individual contributions from each person. Certainly, we need a way of tracking this and keeping tabs on it too.

Okay, enough writing. Too much going through my head right now.

I may have alluded to this before, but I certainly haven’t really written a full entry about this much. iGEM has certainly been the most complete research experience I’ve had to date.

I was chatting on MSN with Maya about this just this evening, and I suddenly had a realization. Most of us at the undergraduate level will tag on with a professor and work on a project that one of their grad students or post-docs have been working on, and then leave the lab after the summer or continue on to work on it as a directed studies/honors thesis project. On our resume, we call this “Research Experience”, with the hope of getting good results and tagging our name onto a paper that is published in a peer-reviewed journal.

But that’s what most of us get. We’re given the project rather than initiate it. We needn’t worry about the research money, the lab space, or the equipment – it’s all provided by the PI who runs the lab. We needn’t even worry about research stipends – it’s given to us at the discretion of the professor too! All we need to do is focus on the research, on being a good assistant to the grad students/post-docs to help them get a paper out.

However, that doesn’t tell us the whole picture of research. Research involves money, people, equipment and ideas. Each step of the process is invaluable to knowing how hard it really is to do research.

For example, the process of getting the people. iGEM has certainly made things easier by motivating us as a “competition team”. There’s a certain “draw” to it, being an international competition and such. But other parts are harder.

Getting an idea, for example. It takes time and creativity to incubate and ferment an idea to fruition. For example, it took me 2 weeks of intense research, reading and writing to  summarize my proposed ideas into a 6-page point-form summary which I submitted to Dr. Lagally for reviewing. He came back to me telling me that I had proposed two PhD projects at one go. I was absolutely dumbstruck – that was the highest affirmation of my research skills I had ever received to date; even winning a national research poster competition didn’t say that much about my research skills.

How about getting funding? Under Dr. Lagally’s direction, we wrote up the TLEF proposal and secured $36,000 from them – it was our seed money to start with. That alone was hard – we waited at least 3 months before hearing back from them. Then, we had to make up the rest on our own. $6,000 came from CIHR/MSFHR for funding one student’s stipend, and we’re going to be looking for more. We have to “sell” our idea and its relevance to whatever agencies we are applying to, and that will take strong communication skills, good people skills and a desire to network, all of which are integral in conducting research.

What about the protocols, reagents and equipment? The Michael Smith Laboratories was certainly very, very supportive by lending us use of the Advanced Molecular Biology Laboratory on the first floor, and with it the thermocyclers, bench space and micropipetters. But we have to now research our own protocols, decide on the reagents we need, and, worst of all, work within a budget. If only research needn’t have a budget. But alas, we do, and so we have to decide on the best and cheapest protocols that will suit our needs.

And on the matter of equipment, if we are successful at acquiring a loaner of the MXCell Electroporation System, we would have pulled off our first business deal with the industry. Advertising in exchange for equipment and discounts on consumables. All done by a group of greenhorn pretenders in the vast world of experienced researrchers.

Then, we have to do the bench work. I’m not sure how that will pan out, but I trust that by the time summer comes, we’ll have a team of dedicated people working on this project together in AMBL, whether in a full-time or part-time capacity. But we need to find the motivation to do it, to troubleshoot together and solve the problems we face, and to do it within the time constraints of 4 months.

Following the bench work, we’re pretty much on our own for the writeup. Some supervisors will literally feed their students with the writeup; others will be more hands-off (thankfully Gunti was). But in our case, we have to do it from scratch, to tell the story in a concise and cohesive manner that conveys the message with a bang. Our poster, our presentation and, if we are lucky, our research paper, will have to be done up with this criteria in our mind, mostly independently with some input from our graduate student advisors and faculty mentors.

Where else can we get this complete research experience? Which PI lets undergraduates propose an idea that they are willing to support? Which undergraduate gets to work on a team that is so diverse and multidisciplinary, yet so united by a single idea and concept? Which undergraduate has to work on research proposals, funding proposals and other writeups mostly on their own? Few, by far, I believe.

I believe few will be as lucky as us in iGEM to have gone through this complete experience.

We have successfully applied for funding from the CIHR/MSFHR Training Program in Transplantation! Yay! The team now has a success rate of 2/2, with a total of $42,000 of promised funds for us to use. We still need more, and ideally we’ll have a total of $72,000, but with $30,000 more to go and only a month before things start, I’m not sure how we’ll do it. That said, I just gotta have faith. $1,000 from SUS would really help us divert research funds into stipends.

What’s more encouraging is the fact that the Experimentation Team is getting all fired up and ready to match the Funding Team’s efforts at securing sponsorship. I can’t wait to see their protocols when it’s all finalized.

It turns out that whenever I’m in low spirits, I turn to writing. I’m very sure that this blog will be filled with reflections from times when I was low.

In any case, the lowness continues. Today, I missed my 2nd consecutive BIOC302 class, and I sure hope that this trend doesn’t continue. Missing class for a bad reason is a bad enough trigger for me to become disappointed for the day. What more if the class was the first class of the day?

Yet, there is the dichotomy of enjoying the other part of school – the life outside of studying. Most importantly, the life in the lab. That’s the best part of school thus far. Not having a laundry list of assignments to deal with. Not having lab reports to write up every week. Rather, the joy of simply focusing on one or two problems that really pique my interest. The joy of gradually building up knowledge of a system, to become an expert in a unique field, a place where I know most of what I’m doing, but yet knowing that I can have input from others who think broadly enough to critique my work.

When will summer come? Come summer, I can concentrate and focus on iGEM and the GRE, without having to worry about much else. Oh please let summer come.