Week Ten: Project Rehearsal and Prepping for Last PCR

Hi all! This week was more prep for my final presentation. I’ve had some trouble making my project not so confusing and wordy. Especially when it comes to explaining the PCR process and COMT, I’ve simplified a lot of the process on my presentation because I can already see myself spending 20 minutes explaining my entire PCR process and that’s not my goal. It’s helped that I took pictures during my days at the lab because those provide a visual aspect to my project which I feel is better than words on a power point slide.

Overall with my project, I want to emphasize 3 main points. They are:

1. Genes are not destiny
2. Be skeptical of COMT research and understand the possible implications 
3. We want to be able to better define ourselves

I’ll get more into these on the day of my presentation, but personally I feel the most important one is that genes are not destiny. They don’t always properly define our abilities, like COMT, and people can overcome genetic predispositions. Complex gene-environment interactions shape who we are. However, there is power in knowing our genetic information, and what we learn and take from this information is also extremely important, if you chose to do so that is.

Next week is my last week in the lab, and my last week to hope to see results! I’m cutting it as close as possible, but I’m proud of my work on the PCR portion of this experiment regardless if I see results. Thanks for reading!