Having the experience to work in labs oversea has been one of my dreams for long. When I saw the information of NIGINTERN program on sight, I decided to apply for it without doubts. Luckily, I got notification that I was chosen for the NIGINTERN, I was really exciting.

The environment here is really nice: the traffic is convenient, the nature is really beautiful, the people are nice, and the most important of all, there are many excellent professors here! Attentively, this program provide us opportunities to visit their labs and research topics are quite interesting.

As for my lab, I was in Gojobori’s lab. The professors here were very nice though sometimes they were too busy to have the chance to discuss with them. In this summer, I tried to understand how eye evolves in cnidarian, especially in jellyfish. After discussing with professors, we decided to use RNAseq, transcriptome analysis, to identify the genes that especially govern the eye formation and function. It was the first time I conducted the NGS and was a valuable experience for me. Once I the result, the lab members taught me how to analyze the data and it’s also the first time I used the bioinformatics way to deal with big data. Though the result was not good as they expected, these practice really helped me a lot.

Beside the experiment, I also visited a lot of beautiful place in Japan: beautiful beaches, fresh sea food and matsuri in Numazu, cliff in Izu, fireworks in Atami, top of Mt. Fuji, cable car and Lake Ashi in Hakone, and even the Kyoto, Osaka, and Tokyo! These places and events were really nice and worth to go!

With these precious experiences, I’m glad to have the opportunity join this NIGINTERNSHIP, sincerely.