Chun-Hsuan JasonLo

It is my glory to do a research in National institute of Genetic, Japan. Because there are many outstanding scientist over there. In Professor Ituro Inoue’s laboratory I have learnt many cutting edge technology about Next generation sequencing, which can rapidly screen out a person’s or organism’s genome.This technology can also help the physician find out whether the subject is in the risk of getting some rare disease. And it might be applied to preventive and clinical medicine extensively in the near future. Among the four weeks in NIG, I learnt how scientist analyze the big data of human gene sequence, how to use the supercomputer to refine the raw data, and how to interpret the results in a scientific way.

Besides, NIG provided many Japan language classes. During the classes, I learnt to speak some simple Japanese sentences, which helped me a lot. Especially when I traveled in Japan, I those sentence became very useful. During the intern period, NIG also provided intern students many chances to visit different laboratory in NIG. And all the laboratories are well equipped to do excellent experiments, and the professors are also industries and full knowledge. However, the DDBJ impressed me the most, because it provides a huge data base of human gene sequence of East Asia people and the high performance super computers. In the weekdays, I also joined the study group with the other students in my laboratory. We discussed some statistics and probability in a mathematical way, which might be applied to the algorithm of aligning the reads, identifying a mutation, and the allele frequency of mutate gene. And there were also some workshops, which showed us how to present the experiment results and scientific conclusion in a smart way.

In the weekends, I enjoy Japan’s scenery and culture very much. And the life is very colorful over there. I hang around the parks and shrines around Mishima after the classes. And I also traveled to Tokyo with other intern students, going to Atami to see beautiful fireworks with friends, trying the conveyor belt Sushi and Soba noodles with the members in my laboratory, visiting many ancient sites in Kyoto, Osaka and Nara during the long weekend, and taking the trains to hang around Izu, where there are many forest, hotspots, and amazing scenery. In the last week, I also have a special experience of climbing the Fuji Mountain. Japan is really beautiful and I enjoyed my life in NIG very much. I hope that one day I can go back to NIG. It’s really a good place for the scientists to do research and enjoy the life.