Let's Talk About It: Let's Talk About It -- Week 12

This week marks my last one working at ASU. A few days ago in the SLG lab, Dr. Peter and I finished copying all the high CADD and polyphen score genes into a separate document. Today, I further organized this document, color coding the participants (red for speech impairment and dyslexia, orange for speech impairment, yellow for dyslexia, light green for typically developing monolingual, and dark green for typically developing bilingual). Finally, I marked all the male participants in blue so all our patient information was readily visible on the 1400 line spreadsheet.

The data we had received from the company Illumina included a number next to each genotype, always between 0 and 1. At first, Dr. Peter thought these numbers where quality scores; however, a bit of research proved quality scores are always whole numbers. As it turns out, these scores were Gencall scores, a grading scale similar to quality scores, but not as widely used.

My last day in the SLG lab proved I'd learned how to organize and analyze data quickly. My experience in this lab was amazing and helped me to see the world of what happens after the genetics samples are gathered. Overall, we haven't yet reached our conclusions in the SLG lab, but the work itself has taught me more than reading about genetics ever could.

For my final day in the CHILL lab, I was allowed to perform an assessment in Phoenix, meaning I didn't have to drive endlessly far for a simple hour and a half study. During this assessment, I watched a graduate student perform the three intelligence tests meant to check whether students qualify for the POWWER testing, and later we compared the scores we'd each assigned to make sure neither of us had made mistakes.

I also attended my team's poster presentation at ASU, where we talked through out experiment and evidence. Overall, the experience really helped me understand how research works and I'm excited to do my own at ASU!