lab techniques

[Guest eliz]

Hello everyone!

 

I'm a student at Glendale Community College, majoring in bioengineering. I plan to transfer either to UCLA or UCB. I'm looking for a lab internship, and since I've never done that before, and have started wondering into the field not so long ago, I would appreciate very much if someone answered my questions.

 

My first question is the following. Applications for lab internship usually ask a question like: what is it that you specifically expect to develop through this internship? What skills and/or techniques? Honestly, I don't know much about these. I know for sure that I can probe into tissue cultures and artificial cultivation of microorganisms.. but do, please, tell me more about basic techniques.

[daisy]

I'm not remotely au fait with the US system on this but I would say useful lab techniques would involve, molecular biology (i.e. PCR in it's various forms...and there are many forms!!..., electrophoresis -SDS-PGE, agarose gel- Northern, Western and Southern blotting), cell/tissue culture, immunohistochemistry etc.etc.. The ability (and this is VERY basic!) to do simple lab stuff like making up molar solutions, observing standard safety rules etc. also cannot be over-emphasised. I know post-docs who are disastrous from a safety point of view. The only way you learn is to get in there and do it. Good luck.

[zhuam]

Hi,

 

Well, I can tell you for sure that people who work at the labs have a bad impression of college students. Just like in your case, I had to struggle a lot to get into an internship position. Now I have been working for 7 months and I have acquired many skills that I would not have dreamt of.

As far as preparation, I think that universities expect you to have good grades so that they think that you can learn stuff pretty fast. Interships usually last for 10 weeks and you learn a variety of skills... and it depends in the lab. Some labs will give you boring stuff to do, some others will challenge you as much as you can handle.

I am also into the bioengineering stuff. There are a few REU programs accross the nation. Next year, I will apply to many of them and I already have the universities that I want to go in mind.