Team:UC Berkeley/Team/Sherene Cheung



MY NAME/NICKNAME

Sherine Cheung; The Purifier (since, purification was my specialty for a while...)

MY STATS

High school senior at Fortress Hill Academy

WHAT LED ME TO SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY

I first heard about synthetic biology at a biotech camp I attended in summer 2007. The creativity and potential of synthetic biology really fascinated me, and since then, I've kept my eyes and ears open on the subject!

SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY: IN MY WORDS

In synthetic biology, one takes a natural, existing organism (yay, E. coli!) and modifies it so that it can perform a non-natural, but useful task at human command.

In terms of what we do daily in the lab: everyday day in the lab is different; in fact, your plans can change EVERY hour (and you can be accused of being unkind to the planet by wasting a lot of paper scribbling, re-scribbling, and re-re-scribbling plans for the day). It all depends on whether your experiment is in the mood to cooperate with you or not. The general order of events: 1.) We hope (with good scientific reasoning) that the experiment cooperates. 2.) Then, when it doesn't cooperate, we stop, back-track and try to fix things so that it DOES cooperate – sooner or later. 3.) Sometimes, we get stuck in repeating step 2. 4.) When it works...we're elated!

Sometimes, it causes one to wonder if we are actually modifying the organism, or if, in actuality, it is more believable to say that the organism is modifying us...

MY POSSIBLE FUTURE WITH SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY

Were I to continue into synthetic biology, I would love to explore synthetic biology's medical uses.

MY GOALS WITH IGEM

After hearing/reading descriptions of synthetic biology projects, I really wanted to see how a project was done in real life. Most often, you hear about the finished product of a research project, and how wonderful it is; but you hardly ever get to see the entire research process from beginning to end. Second hand information about a given project is great, but the first hand experience I get with iGEM is quite thrilling and altogether, different. It's helped me put the puzzle pieces together -- from planning steps to finished product; and, of course everything exciting in between!

MY FAVORITE DNA SEQUENCE

The phoA prepros are my all-time favorite. I've gotten quite acquainted with them, having made/remade them 3 or 4 times. Even one base pairs' worth of imperfection in any of my prepros will have me on edge -- such is the strength of my emotional attachment to said prepros.

MY DUMBEST LAB MISTAKE/COMPUTATIONAL ERROR

When I was flaming the foil covering a set of PCR tubes to sterilize it, the tip of the bunsen burner flame touched a nearby stash of Kimwipes, setting them ablaze. But, I believe my mistake is totally justified, since fire makes everything better.

MY FAVORITE CHILDHOOD CARTOON

Tom and Jerry!!

MY FAVORITE FOOD

Sushi and any type of soup-noodle!