Mollie Mandell reports on her first week at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois, as a summer Research Intern in the Mass Spectometry Laboratory.
“When I received an offer to work in the lab of Dr. Mary Kinsel at SIU, I could not refuse… What I wanted most out of this summer was an opportunity to explore my interests and clearly cement my plans for college. Last year, I learned that I enjoyed biology, but over the course of my sophomore year, I realized that I am also a big fan of chemistry. Thus, when I learned that the prospective area of study was mass spectrometry, I was more intrigued at the chance to delve deeper into chemistry than concerned that I would not be able to understand the topic. In between shifts at the library and musical rehearsals, I spent the first weeks of summer researching mass spectrometry, which was a field I had not known much about. I found that it was not as daunting as I originally thought, and my excitement to apply my newfound knowledge increased,” Molly explains.
“It wasn’t my first time at the Gower Translational Research Center—I had toured it along with Drs. Mary and Gary Kinsel a few weeks before—but I had not yet met the graduate student whom I would be working under, Chloe Hillyer. When I walked into the lab and greeted her, I was relieved to find that she is a helpful, kind, and intelligent person, who has done much to make me feel comfortable despite not knowing anything about me,” Mollie adds.
“Not many people work in the Mass Spectrometry Core, especially during the summer, so for the most part, it has just been me, Chloe, and Dr. Mary Kinsel in the lab. After I met Chloe, I was shown a new instrument that was being installed: the MALDI-TOF Mass Spectrometer. Chloe then showed the wet and dry labs, which I had not seen during the tour, as well as the Analytical Core (another lab within Gower). She explained her research project to me in more depth, which helped me to understand my position within the internship. She is studying heavy metals in hemp cigarettes and trying to see if these products have more harmful substances than Illinois regulations allow. I was initially skeptical when I heard about it, but I came to realize that she was genuine in her curiosity and was not just choosing a provocative topic,” Mollie reports.
“Next, she taught me about the Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer (ICP-MS), which is the main instrument she uses on her project. It took me a few minutes to understand, but the process of ICP-MS is very interesting: a liquid sample is ionized by an extremely hot plasma, and the ions are moved into a vacuum (so that they do not collide), separated by their mass-to-charge ratio, and then organized into data by the detector. After that, the first activity I actually did to help in the lab was pouring nitric acid waste out of tubes into a container. As I was doing that, Chloe poured filtered water in the leftover tubes so that they can be stored without interruption. Chloe explained to me that the filters she uses in the smoking machine for her project produce readings of heavy metals, even while blank, which is skewing her results. She is attempting to stop this, so we placed the filters in a nitric acid solution to soak overnight in hopes of reducing the readings,” Mollie says.
“The next day would be longer than the first, so I was prepared to learn more about my role for the summer. That morning, Chloe and I removed the blank filters from the nitric acid, rinsed them, and waited for them to dry, flipping them every 30 minutes. After that, I poured out more waste by myself, and then together we moved some trash from the MALDI-TOF MS install to a different part of the building,” Mollie reports.
“My favorite part of the day came next: we removed empty argon tanks from the ICP-MS and replaced them with new ones. The process of moving the tanks was slightly nerve-wracking, as Chloe kept reminding me of the possibility that they would blow up, but I learned a lot about the maintenance of the ICP-MS and the struggles that a small, rural university goes through with supplies. To kill more time, Dr. Kinsel gave me a reading on the MALDI-TOF MS while the filters were left to completely dry in the oven. Once they were dry, we placed them in Chloe’s digestion solution, heated them, and left them to sit, before removing the liquid and preparing them to run in the ICP-MS the next day,” Mollie adds.
“Before we could run the samples, though, the engineer finally had the supplies to give us familiarization training on the MALDI. MALDI-TOF MS stands for “Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization Time of Flight Mass Spectrometer.” It is different to the ICP-MS and is mostly used to analyze larger biomolecules and synthetic polymers due to its unique ability to preserve those molecules’ size instead of fragmenting them. This instrument is especially interesting to me, as it has potential applications in cancer detection and other medicine. Afterwards, Chloe taught me the startup procedures for the ICP-MS before placing the samples inside of the machine and analyzing them. The whole process took about three hours, so later that afternoon, Chloe read the data and found that the soaking had worked, but only slightly,” Mollie explains.
“Overall, the first week was a success and a great opportunity for me to gain lab experience in a real-world setting. I am so grateful that I am able to have this internship over the summer, and I can never thank the Garwin Family Foundation enough. You have truly taught me what it means to be flexible and I know that I am going to have an amazing experience this year,” Mollie adds.
Week Two — Helping with more rigorous tasks
During the second week, Mollie continued with assisting Chloe on her research project.
“Due to the lack of research on hemp cigarettes, Chloe has not been able to find many sources for her thesis, so she enlisted me to help her in her search. She handed me a list of keywords, such as phrases like “trace metals” and “particulate matter,” which I used in combination with each other to find articles that I hoped would help her. I found some interesting ones, but because of the nature of her research, most of them related to tobacco and cannabis cigarettes. However, I was still able to glean useful information, including data about the filters we use, smoking machines, and heavy metal accumulation. At the end of the day, we soaked five filters in a nitric acid solution to leave overnight,” Mollie explains.
“When we came back the next morning, we removed the filters from the nitric acid and let them soak in water on the rocker, changing the water twice. Afterwards, we drained them and left the plates under the fume hood to dry, flipping the filters throughout. Chloe came in early the next morning to further dry the filters in the oven. Once they were done, I pipetted the digestion solution into tubes with the filters. This was a skill I was a bit rusty with, as I hadn’t used a pipettor since those few days in the lab at UChicago last year. I quickly got the hang of it again, though, and I felt nostalgic for my first days in a lab the year prior,” Mollie adds.
“The best part of this day was being more active in the project, as Chloe allowed me to completely prepare my own three samples with her guidance. We placed the tubes in a hot block to digest before letting them sit. While they did, Chloe directed me in the process of making a batch for the ICP-MS, which mostly included me clicking around blindly until I found the button she was guiding me to. Once I finished the batch, though, I found that the program was not too difficult to understand. Then, she let me do the starting procedures for the instrument, which included securing the peristaltic tubing and opening the gas canisters. We checked on our samples afterwards. I rinsed my batch of filters and poured their liquid into different tubes before adding water to dilute the acid,” Mollie reports.
“The next step was to filter the tubes so that no solid matter would be sampled by the ICP-MS, which would ruin the instrument. Once they were ready, we placed the samples into the mass spectrometer and hoped that what we had done would work. After the two hours that it took to run, I went through the ending procedures while Chloe pored over the data and converted it into a usable spreadsheet. From the results, we found that the soaking had worked slightly better than the rinsing, and we had more consistent numbers that will contribute to our background reading subtraction. Overall, it was a very successful day,” Mollie adds.
“What I enjoyed most about this week was being able to help more independently within the lab, which allowed me to learn much more about mass spectrometry and research in general. I am having a great time gaining responsibility, as I believe Chloe and Dr. Kinsel are beginning to trust me with more rigorous tasks. Outside of the lab, though, I am appreciative of being at home, as it gives me an opportunity to learn about accountability and balancing everything that is important to me: this internship, my job, my family, rehearsals, running, et cetera. At the same time, I am trying to enjoy this experience as much as possible, as my favorite memories from UChicago were outside of the classroom. So, I have been taking moments to explore Carbondale, check out shops, and get to know Dr. Kinsel and Chloe. I am very grateful to the Garwin Family Foundation for providing me with this opportunity,” Mollie says.
We are happy to hear that you are feeling more confident about your internship and getting an opportunity to work more independently. Good job, Mollie!.
