by Juliet Snyder

To go home, or not to go home, that is the question. Well, at least for me it was a question. When you are in college, summers are a great time to explore new places and gather new experiences. My freshman advisor told me that if I wanted to do any meaningful research, i needed to find a lab in Cambridge to work at this summer and every summer thereafter. As a rising sophomore, at Harvard, I wasn’t quite ready to accept his advice. Much to his probable dismay, I decided (after a tough first year at college) that, I wanted to do research in my hometown of San Diego, California. I am incredibly happy with my decision. 

San Diego is a big, bustling city that has a wide variety of components – beach communities, multiple "downtown"-like areas, university campuses, etc. Moreover, LA and Hollywood are just an hour and a half ride away (and yes that includes Disneyland). 

by Juliet Snyder

At times I feel like I have to compare my lab to a small British car. I say British car because our PI, or Principle Investigator, is a very British man. The car comes from the fact that my lab is focused on Diabetic neuropathy, with each lab member focused on a different facet like the different components of a car engine. The lab is composed of four main members– undergraduates (that’s me!), graduate students, post-docs and lab technicians. Typically each graduate student, post doc and lab technician has their own projects that they work on, working together with the PI to come up with a plan for testing in order to try out a new treatment or test a new theory. The undergraduates are then liberally sprinkled around the lab as the minions of those heading the various projects. 

By Juliet Snyder

The Power of a Flinch for Diabetic Neuropathy
             
There is no one“typical day” at the Calcutt pathology lab. Sure, the framework may be the same: I run experiments and I analyze the data that I gather from said experiments. However, research is a wonderfully creative process that requires a great deal of innovative thinking: How do I gather said data? What variations do I need to do to test my hypothesis?

On a typical day I get into the lab at 9:30 AM (I really appreciate not having to get into work at 7) and set up my experiment for the day. Diabetes comes with many complications, one of which is diabetic neuropathy. It is well known that diabetes causes degeneration and regeneration of peripheral nerves, causing sensory loss. Unfortunately few treatments currently exist for diabetic neuropathy, with the leading treatment simply being blood glucose control. This is where my lab steps in, working on discovering potential treatments for diabetic neuropathy. My day comprises of behavioral tests on diabetic mice to determine the extent of nerve degeneration. The specific test I run takes about 3 hours because the test has to be repeated every thirty minutes (time trials!) to track increases or decreases in nerve sensitivity.

The Calcutt lab is a pathology lab at UCSD and I have the pleasure to work under Corinne Jolivalt for the summer. My project concentrates on several components of diabetes. Diabetes is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States, a rate that is only higher in Mexico, where diabetes is the leading cause of death. I also have a personal connection to my project. My grandfather had diabetes and my mother had gestational diabetes. A major component of diabetes is nerve degeneration, or diabetic neuropathy – a symptom which I witnessed firsthand in my grandfather. He had his foot amputated after his foot developed gangrene from a cut.