Week 4

In the clinic, I had another interesting week shadowing Dr. Vielemeyer.  Some of the more unique cases we saw this week included a case of recurring bacterial endocarditis, a case of delusional parasitosis, and an interesting diagnosis of infection by the parasite wuchereria bancrofti contracted by the patient during a trip to the Caribbean.  I was quite impressed by the diplomatic manner of Dr. Vielemeyer when handling the case of delusional parasitosis, in which the patient insisted that they were infected by a parasite despite having no irregular test results and having already undergone rounds of antiparasitic and antibiotic treatment.  

I also had the opportunity to tour the hospital’s molecular pathology lab, which is filled with state of the art instrumentation for a variety of diagnostic applications including cancer testing, genetic testing, viral load determination for a number of infectious diseases, as well as bone marrow engraftment analysis.  One piece of equipment that stood out in particular was a robotic sample preparation system from Roche that automates sample extraction for real time qPCR.  I was quite amazed by the capabilities and efficiency of the system.  A viewing window on the instrument allowed for observation of the robotic arm inside as it rapidly moved about completing the sample extraction process.   

For my research project this week, I focused on testing the PCR primers we designed for beta subunit 5 of the p. falciparum proteasome.  I was finally able to achieve some promising results towards the end of the week after setting up numerous experiments testing different starting concentrations of reagents and combinations of forward and reverse primers.  We will send out the samples early next week for sequencing, the results of which will be interesting to analyze as the proteasome inhibitor we are working with is hypothesized to disrupt beta subunit 5.  Hopefully, a comparison of the beta 5 genes between wild type and resistance strains will yield some insight into the genetic basis for proteasome inhibitor resistance.