{"id":22153,"date":"2017-08-07T11:13:02","date_gmt":"2017-08-07T09:13:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emblog.embl.de\/ells\/?p=22153"},"modified":"2021-06-23T07:59:51","modified_gmt":"2021-06-23T07:59:51","slug":"ish2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/ells\/2017\/08\/07\/ish2017\/","title":{"rendered":"An international students\u2019 day at EMBL"},"content":{"rendered":"
Guest article by Nefely Aikaterini Taravira<\/h5>\n

Young students from all over the world meet at EMBL to discover the fascinating world of science.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

As I\u2019m arriving at the EMBL in Heidelberg, young voices and laughter come from the Advanced Training Centre (ATC) building. Today, EMBL is hosting the International Summer Science School Heidelberg<\/a> (ISH). Twenty two young students from Australia, Japan, USA, Ukraine, France, UK and Germany \u2013 from the sister cities and partner organizations of Heidelberg \u2013 will have the chance to spend four weeks packed with science in some of Heidelberg\u2019s most famous research institutes, including EMBL.<\/p>\n

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The ISH participants at the EMBL Advanced Training Centre. Picture credit: ELLS<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The programme, which is organised by the city of Heidelberg<\/a> for the 22nd<\/sup> time this year, provides a unique experience to international students. \u201cIn this time the students will not only get a hands-on experience in science but also form long-lasting friendships and have fun\u201d, former participants, now ISH aids, tell me. As part of their first week introductory workshops, they visited EMBL today. Throughout the workshop, the staff of the European Learning Laboratory for the Life Sciences (ELLS) and collaborating EMBL scientists to made the students familiar with the topic of the day, X-ray crystallography.<\/p>\n

As a young student myself, doing a summer internship with ELLS, I found the idea of the ISH intriguing and was particularly excited about preparing and participating in today\u2019s experiment: protein crystallization.<\/p>\n

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Jakub presenting the basics of protein crystallography. Picture credit: ELLS<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The day started with a get-to-know-EMBL presentation. Six sites, 23 member states, 1600 people from over 80 countries, all part of the EMBL family! Next, we listened to the presentation from Jakub Maco\u0161<\/em>ek \u2013 a doctoral student of the Hennig lab \u2013 who smoothly introduced us to protein structure and function, to conclude with the basic method of X-ray crystallography of proteins. \u201cThe way that the crystal of our protein of interest scatters when struck by X-rays reveals its structure and therefore enhances our understanding of protein function, something that cannot be done by a light microscope and is of great importance to medicine\u201d, Jakub emphasises. Proteins, when put in the right conditions \u2013 which can be really difficult to discover as I figured out later \u2013 are arranged in a three-dimensional order and form crystals. This will be the up-coming experiment, the highlight of the day.<\/p>\n

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Hands-on experience in protein crystallography. Picture credit: ELLS<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As soon as it was time to put lab coats and gloves on, with their eyes wide open, all students listened to the instructions and couldn\u2019t wait to start pipetting themselves. Most of us had some lab experience and with the help of the starter kit we had been given, we greased the plates, pipetted the reservoir solution and the crystallization drop, covered the plates carefully and let them incubate. Our very own lysozyme crystals would hopefully grow in the solution soon! Setting up the experiment demanded our concentration and quick thinking, but didn\u2019t stop anyone from enjoying the chance to become a scientist, even if only for a little while.<\/p>\n

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A visit to the EMBL Protein Expression and Purification Facility with Kim. Picture credit: ELLS<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After lunch, Dr. Kim Remans, Head of the EMBL Protein Expression and Purification Core Facility, talked to us about the lab methods needed in order to express and purify proteins \u2013 her lab\u2019s \u201cjob\u201d. We then walked cheerfully through the heavy rain, to pay a visit to the lab itself. Flasks of bacteria shaking, gels running, Western blots incubating, columns purifying proteins, robots distributing solutions \u2013 we had the chance to see it all \u2013 we even visited the cold room. There is a huge difference between hearing something and experiencing it yourself! I could see that the ISH students agreed. \u201cA real tour through the scientists\u2019 world\u201d a student confided.<\/p>\n

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Did the crystallisation work? Picture credit: ELLS<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the meantime, our crystals were growing and even though they needed 20 hours to reach their full size, some baby crystals had already started forming. Everyone got the chance to see their team\u2019s results through the microscope, document every detail in the results analysis sheet and compare it with a test experiment that was done the previous day. With the right tools we also fished crystals from the growth solution, the technique of crystal mounting as it is usually called. We were overjoyed. \u201cYou should come quickly, I think we\u2019ve made a discovery!\u201d some students shouted. In their plates appeared different, bigger crystals. Unfortunately, they turned out to be only the edges of the plate.<\/p>\n

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Protein crystals under the microscope. Picture credit: ELLS<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The day at EMBL ended with a tour around the ATC building and a wrap-up of the day. Every student was satisfied with today\u2019s activities and looked forward to continuing the ISH experience. \u201cI\u2019m really happy to be a part of the ISH programme, there is a lot that I can learn. I\u2019m excited about doing very specific research at the Max Planck Institute the following three weeks\u201d, one of the students exclaims. Another participant added \u201cI will be spending the other three weeks at EMBL and I\u2019m really enthusiastic about it, today was a great start. In the following weeks, I expect to go deeper onto what we\u2019ve started and at the same time get to know more about the city of Heidelberg\u201d. Undoubtedly, the hands-on experiment was everyone\u2019s favourite of the day. \u201cThe crystals under the microscope looked pretty cool because I\u2019ve never seen anything like this before and I didn\u2019t know about the method until today. Now we got to do it ourselves!\u201d, a student said.<\/p>\n

The International Summer Science School of Heidelberg 2017 is off to a great start!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ELLS visitor Nefely reports on the International Summer Science School of Heidelberg.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"embl_taxonomy":[],"class_list":["post-22153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"embl_taxonomy_terms":[],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/ells\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.svg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/ells\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/ells\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/ells\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/ells\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/ells\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22153"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/ells\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30336,"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/ells\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22153\/revisions\/30336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/ells\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/ells\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/ells\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22153"},{"taxonomy":"embl_taxonomy","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/ells\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/embl_taxonomy?post=22153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}