A summer of learning by doing - DCU LSI interns get to grips with research

Summer is a time to explore new horizons and opportunities. And for the interns at DCU Life Sciences, getting to grips with lab work and learning about the wider world of research has opened up new perspectives and paths into the future.  

A total of 17 students took part in internships during the summer months.

They included DCU undergraduate student Cara Lau, for whom a summer in DCU LSI has whetted her appetite for doing more lab-based research in the future.

During her lectures in DCU’s Genetics and Cell Biology degree, Cara had heard about lab techniques such as CRISPR, PCR and cloning, and a two-month internship with Dr Janosch Heller at DCU School of Biotechnology allowed her to put them into practice.

“When you hear about these techniques in the lecture hall, it’s a lot of information to take in,” says Cara. “But then when you get to do the techniques in the lab it’s really interesting and it was a great way for me to learn more about them”

Cara’s project saw her working on approaches to tag a protein called aquaporin, which helps to regulate how water crosses into and out of cells. Tagging the protein with a fluorescent marker can help to identify where the protein is under the microscope. 

“I learned a lot about how to prepare for a research project, doing the background reading and learning about techniques and then ordering reagents and preparing everything,” she says. “That really built my skills and confidence in the lab.”  

Even before she started the project, Cara had an inkling that she might prefer ‘wetlab’ work in biology as opposed to ‘drylab’, which predominantly uses computers, and her experience in DCU LSI this summer has strengthened that view. 

“I really enjoyed working with samples and proteins,” she says. “And because I was in LSI I got to talk to lots of researchers in different areas of the life sciences, and I got to hear the weekly DCU LSi cafes. I think research will be a focus for me into the future.” 

Fellow Genetics and Cell Biology undergraduate Abbie Mackin, who is heading into her final year, is more on the dry-lab side of house, and as part of her degree she did a six-month bioinformatics placement from February to July with Prof Gaetan Thilliez and PhD researcher Cian Ennis at DCU School of Biotechnology. 

Abbie’s placement began with a steep learning curve in coding and scripting, before she moved into exploring the genomes of bacteria that cause TB.  

Her first project compared six different tools for calculating a specific type of difference between TB strains, and she presented her findings  as a poster at the DCU Biological Research Society (BRS) Research Day. 

She then moved to a larger dataset, which allowed her to better map the geographical spread of different TB-causing strains of bacteria, which she presented to the wider lab group. 

“I really got to do a deep dive and understand how the genomic analysis tools worked and why we were taking these approaches," says Abbie. “I also got to experience the research environment in the LSI and that has widened my horizons, I could see the range of things that people were working on.” 

For Master’s student Emily Moore, a 12-week placement in Dr Keith Rochfort’s lab in DCU School of Biotechnology saw her immersed in research to explore the blood-brain barrier. 

Emily came to her Master’s in Diagnostics and Precision Medicine at DCU after four years studying Applied Biology and Biopharmaceutical Science in Galway, and her motivation was rooted in a desire to address unmet medical need.

For her final project, she worked with cells derived from a hard-to-treat brain cancer called glioblastoma. In particular, she was interested in whether the cancer cells release factors that have an impact on endothelial cells, which form an important part of the barrier between the blood vessels and the brain. 

“It is hard to find drugs that can cross the blood brain barrier, and there are not many treatments for glioblastoma, so we were interested in how the cancer cells can affect this barrier,” explains Emily. 

In the lab, she grew glioblastoma cells alongside healthy endothelial cells, then explored the activity, viability and impact of both cell types.

“I could see that the endothelial cells that were exposed to the glioblastoma cells had less viability and increased permeability,” she says. “They also had reduced expression of tight-junction proteins and higher levels of the inflammatory marker IL-6.” 

Emily valued the independence the placement offered, and the independence to build her schedule around the needs of the project.

“Keith guided me initially but then let me off to solve problems, while also being in the background to answer questions,” she says. 

“I learned a lot from him too about career paths, and I feel that even though it was only 12 weeks, I gained a huge amount of experience that will stand to me into the future.”