Message From NIG Interns 2008


Parshuram S. Hotkar (Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India) Hirata Lab.
Hirata Lab
Hi, I recently finished my summer internship in Prof. Hirata's Lab. My work was centered on effect of Ephrin and Eph receptors on the boundary formation in early development stages of mouse embryo. During early stages of Brain development, boundary is formed in order to separate different compartments of the brain. My work was focused on the boundary formation between Neocortex and Ganglionic Eminence (GE). We studied the effect of Ephrin and Eph receptor signaling on the boundary formation. After enough practicing, I could transfect the protein of interest selectively either in Neocortex or in GE. The interesting results that we got motivated us to use intracellular domain deficient Ephrin and Eph receptor in order to study the role of bidirectional signaling.

Apart from the most fascinating animal culture, I got to learn many other things like making a mutant protein with the knowledge of sequence, designing new constructs of interest. I personally think that NIG summer research internship program is a golden opportunity for undergraduate students to explore the research world. This gives the undergraduate student an idea how researches are being designed, conducted in labs. This also gives a glimpse about how exciting and interesting a research field could be. I feel much more confident to take research as my career.

If you consult me about the people and environment, I would say it has never been better. The people in Japan, as many of you might know already, are very polite, kind and helping. I found that all the professors and colleagues in NIG are very friendly and helping all the time. My professor especially was there all the time to clear my doubts and guide me in correct direction. I really am thankful to all of them who showed a great interest in helping me out.

Apart from the academic achievements of this program, we had a very good opportunity to learn about Japanese language and culture. I especially miss the Japanese food. I sometimes wish that I could turn the clock back. I can surely say that the NIGINTERN 2008 gave me a new lease of life.
 
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