Hi there! Welcome to UC Davis!

I am one of the second year undergraduate here and I

welcome you guys’ decision on coming to UC Davis. Since you guys are Biomedical

Engineering majored students here at a research university, you might want to consider

joining a research laboratory at UC Davis to enrich your problem-solving skills and become a

critical thinker. And if you are wondering how scientists in an engineering lab solve

challenges after challenges, you have come to a right place. I will take you to one of the best

research lab in the biomedical engineering department in UC Davis to take a look at how

researchers carry out experiments to facilitate their research. Through this journey, I will

show you scientists conduct research cautiously through a systematic and logical way by

understanding the underlying scientific principles and being familiar with common

procedures as well as the operation of various instruments.

The place that we are going to visit is at the Genome and Biomedical Science Facility.

The entrance of the Genome and Biomedical

Science Facility. (image taken by me)

Genome and Biomedical Science Facility is a grey and yellow themed building that is located

at the south-west corner of the campus, housing a variety of scientific core facilities such

bioinformatics core, DNA Technologies Core, Expression Analysis Core as well as a variety

of laboratories. [1] As the name suggests, a lot of biomedical engineering research is done in

the building and it is one of the true gem in the campus. At the third floor of the facility, there

is our destination: The Jackson’s lab. Jackson’s lab researches on biomedical engineering

and from the posters near the lab, we can know for sure that the lab works on chemistry.
With the curiosity of how researchers crack down problems and roll their sleeves to do

research, I approached Mike, a researcher at the lab who seems to be scrolling through the

webpage. “So, what are you doing?” I asked. “I am finding papers on scifinder to find steps

on how to run the reaction.” Mike glanced at me and further explained: “for chemistry

synthesis problem, we usually use scifinder to find us research papers that has the steps on

chemistry synthesis.” Mike replied so when I asked where can we get the papers. I walked

around him so I can find an angle of what he is looking at. He drew 2 chemical structures on

the scifinder, and labeled them as reactant and product, then he pressed the enter key.

Immediately, the website popped up search results containing the chemicals entered in the

search box and a route of reaction is provided. “The route of synthesis can be tracked back

to its original source which is usually from chemistry papers published, so we know it is from

a credible source.” Mike further explained. From the action of Mike, it is obvious that Mike,

as a researcher, put his time into preparing the solving the problem by finding out scientific

literature to see about the other peers published on the chemical reaction and the

fundamentals regarding the problem from the literature search from scifinder and build on

that understanding to further their research.

I walked over to the opposite side of the lab where the primary fume hood is located. Fume

hood is a safety device that withdraw air at the top layer of the fume hood. It aims at

protecting the users from harmful fumes that maybe produced during chemical reactions. [2]

Inside the fume hood, the first thing that grabs the eye is the hot plates and oil bath on the

right corner of the fume hood. This handy oil bath is made of three things: a big container

that have mineral oil in it, a thermometer connected to a digital control panel and a hot plate.

There were wires coming in and out of the thermometer and the hot plate so the temperature

measured by the thermometer can be inputted into the digital control panel and the hot plate

can then react to the temperature measured and adjust its heat output. The researchers at

the lab would have to understand how to operate instruments like this to give them the

optimal temperature they need to run the reaction.

At the left side of the fume hood, Jack is preparing to do a column purification. He poured

out some silica gel into a beaker and added some hexane to dissolve the white powder.

Then, he used a spatula to swirl the mixture so it looks homogenous (Well-mixed). After the

gel is well mixed, he poured the gel into the column for purification. He is very familiar with

the procedure as it is clear that he knows exactly what to put into the mixture and where to

put the mixture in. With the silica gel poured into the column, Jack connected an air hole with

an adaptor so he can flow air through the column. Then, Jack carefully packed a layer of

sand on to the silica and added his reaction mixture with a dropper from the tip of the

column. From his attention to details, as well as the general change in the physical form of

the silica gel and the gentle addition of the reaction mixture, I can easily see it is very

important to pack the column carefully to obtain the best result possible.

A well packed column inside the fume hood

(image taken by me)
With everything well prepared, Jack started adding solvents in to the column. He used the

solvent system of hexane: ethyl acetate for this task. As he continues to run the column, he

started using higher portion of ethyl acetate. “Why do you add the solvent like this?” I asked.

“It is because my product is a polar compound and it will come out with a more polar solvent,

look at the structure of ethyl acetate, it is much more polar than hexane, so as I increase the

polar solvent’s portion, I will expect my product to come out. For the purification to work, you

have to be very careful about the solvent’s polarity as well as your product’s polarity to make

sure you are not doing things wrongly.” This process showed the logical deduction that Jack

has in order to predict when his product is going to come out and what portion of organic

solvent he will have to add to get a good separation of the mixture.

At the entrance of the lab, Jacob is trying to dry his samples. “What is this?” I pointed at the

machine he is operating. “This is rota-vap and it is used to remove the solvents “Jacob

answered me while connecting his experiment set up onto the rota-vap. the machine that is

makes a low humming noise and he turned on the valve of the vacuum. With the valve

turned on, a squeezing high-pitched noise came. Jacob turned on the rotation function of the

rotavap so the flask connected at the bottom will swirl. He controlled the speed of the

swirling so gives a gentle flow to the fluid at the bottom. He then controls the machine arm

and lowered the flask into a water bath connected at the bottom so only the tip of the flask is

touching the water. With the metal arm in position, he sets an optimal temperature of the

water bath and closed an air valve of the machine. Jack then turned off a valve at the tip of

the machine so that no outside air can rush into the set up and the machine went back to the

low humming sound. By knowing how to operate the rota-vap, Jacob was able to dry his

compound into a solid. Without knowing how to operate rota-vap, Jacob would have a hard

time drying his samples to store them.

 The rotavap machine in the lab
(image taken by me)

Doing research is never easy, just like making the progress in the field of science is not

easy. It is filled with all sort of procedures and methodology which requires patience and

understanding of the scientific principals every step along the way. As we can see in all of

the researchers’ experiments, doing research requires a good understanding of the behavior

of the chemicals like optimal temperature of the reaction to set it in the oil bath, or a

fundamental understanding of the principal of purification and being familiar with the

procedures. Now you have understood how a researcher do an experiment and the

progression of research, are you more interested in getting some research experience and

letting yourself become a researcher to crack problems along the road of research? If so,

you are always welcome to go to our school’s academic success center to find out more

about the road of research! I will see you next time!

Reference page:

1. “GBSF.” UCDavis Genome and Biomedical Science Facility, the Genome and
Biomedical Science Facility, http://www.easybib.com/guides/citation-guides/mla-
8/cite-website-mla-8/.
2. Saunders, G. Thomas. Laboratory fume hoods: a user's manual. John Wiley & Sons,
1993.