I can’t believe that I’ve been in Belgium for
six weeks now. It’s easy to forget how much you do in a week. I have come to
appreciate the quick transition between urban landscape to rural landscape, the
A4+ paper (slightly longer than A4 paper in the US), ordering Amazon packages
from Amazon Germany, and using Blablacar, a carpool sharing app (like a long
distance Uber) with super-cheap travel prices.
For my research, I am working with E. coli bacteria and studying the
extracellular matrixes they form, called biofilms. Biofilms are known to be
especially antibiotic resistant. Though you might think biofilms are a
homogeneous layer like slime, that is, they are composed of one material, they
are actually heterogeneous, which means they are composed of many kinds of
materials. The heterogeneity gives different parts of the biofilm different
functions, similar to organs.
Part of my research is performing impedance
assays on biofilms to detect the changes in electrical impedance due to the
heterogeneity of the biofilm. I began to explore another concept these past few
weeks using two separate strains of E. coli.
One strain of E. coli is the wild
type, or one that is found in nature. The other strain of E. coli is a mutant of E. coli that does not form biofilms.
I am investigating the behaviors of these E. coli two strains when they are
cultured or grown together. Due to the strength of biofilms, you might assume
that the wild type (biofilm forming) strain would outcompete or overtake the
mutant (non-biofilm forming) strain. In fact, literature suggests the opposite.
Under starvation conditions, the mutant strain has been shown to outcompete the
wild type strain. Why? Possibly because the wild type strain depletes its
resources and nutrients to create a biofilm, while the mutant strain is able to
take advantage of the pre-existing biofilm without expending the energy to
build it.
Outside of the lab, I traveled to Paris and
Amsterdam in consecutive weekends. Both are cities with heavy tourism, which
was definitely a downside. I had trouble discerning the cultural atmosphere in each
country because of the tourism, but I still saw fantastic historic architecture
and extensive museums.
In Paris, I tried pate for the first time and
it was surprisingly delicious! We arrived late on Friday evening, but ended up
going to an outdoor techno concert in the park. Though I’m not necessarily a
techno fan, the strobe lights actually made the atmosphere really cool. The
next day, I met my friend from Hopkins and had pate for lunch. We ended up
attending the European MD-PhD conference at the Imagine Institute and listened
to a talk about cancer. That evening, I went to fondue with Dante and Arik in a
restaurant that served beverages out of baby bottles!
In Amsterdam, all of the interns went and a
few friends from Hopkins. We went to the Van Gogh museum and the Rijksmuseum.
Everything in Amsterdam was open late, unlike the other cities we’ve visited.
Rayyan and I ate huge pancakes and sampled gouda at all of the cheese shops.
Amsterdam is crisscrossed with canals and gorgeous bridges.
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| View of one of the canals in Amsterdam |
Unfortunately, Belgium did not make the finals
of the world cup and fell to France 0-1. The third place game will be on
Saturday, and hopefully Belgium can take down England again! The next two
weekends I will be spending in Belgium--possibly Ghent and Antwerp, and then
Les Ardennes with CTT (my lab group). Thanks for reading!
Celebrating Belgium's win over Japan in round 16 in the Oude Markt in Leuven.
Dante and Arik take a break after lunch everyday to play foosball in the Java Cafe at imec.
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| Sipping coffee in the Java Cafe at imec |
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