My name is Taylor Robinson. I’m a freshman at UK in the Chemical Engineering Department.
I grew up in southern Illinois in a town called Edwardsville, just outside of St. Louis Missouri.
My father was in the Marines and my mom was a businesswoman. On my mom’s side, my two
uncles are in the medical field, but not research per se. One who is a physician’s assistant
and one’s an orthopedic doctor, and just my grandfather telling me stories about the
experiences that they’ve had and being able to help others. Ever since I was five, I could
remember wanting to be a doctor as my future career path. And then, as I grew up later
into school and middle school and high school, I really started to like math and things like
that and problem solving. Also, Neil deGrasse Tyson, I watch a lot of his videos and that
got me interested in science and answering questions and things like that. And so, just
where those two met, I found a lot of interest in. I’m here two days a week and on one
day I’ll cut muscle samples and kind of image those on the microscope and make sure
they look alright. And then the following day, I will make the liquid for the stain
and then kind of prepare that and then image them, take them on the computer, and count
the certain cells that my research pertains to, and then kind of analyze that the next week.
It’s a collaborative experience and I learn a lot from it, just doing the things
that I do in the lab, whether it’s staining or cutting samples and getting ideas off of
one another and kind of learning from everyone around me is a breathtaking and humbling experience
to say the least. Right now, I’m looking at satellite cells, also known as muscle stem
cells, and we know that they’re involved in muscle regeneration. What I’m looking
at is how they’re involved with running in your day-to-day activities in an active
versus a dormant adolescent. And with the mice, we depleted the satellite cells in one
strand and in the other we did not, and we found that the two mice ran for the same amount
of time, but not the same distance. And so, I’m looking on a cellular level how the
structure of the cells compares to trying to see where those imbalances lie. I would
say that the most exciting aspect is after I’ve collected all the data and seeing where
everything connects, and how what I’m doing in lab on a day-to-day basis, can kind of
come together to give me ideas of you know, “Oh, well we see that this certain thing
in the extra-cellular matrix in the cell is overgrowing and that’s the reason that this
is happening.” And just seeing why things are happening and answering those questions
is really exciting. The future of the science that I’m working on, I would definitely
say that it’s finding out a true role of the muscle stem cells. And then figuring out
as we age, the number of the stem cells naturally goes down and seeing what that really means
to us on a day-to-day basis, making that connection and connecting it to other diseases and just
going about day-to-day life as we age, improving that. UK is a great place to do science because
it’s very open-minded in the sense of everyone’s input is valued, and it’s motivated by the
impact that we can have and the fact that we’re right next to the hospital and everything.
It really puts the importance on the patients and how this can affect them. And also, just
the vast array of opportunities that there are in the sense of research and the different
types of research that you can get involved in. Any advice to someone looking into science,
I would say, keep an open mind. Try to think instead of a specific thing you want to tackle
or subject of something that interests you, because a lot of times you know everyone growing
up who has an interest in research says, “I’m going to find the cure for cancer! I’m going
to be the next person to do that!” But a lot of times, what’s involved in scientific
research is 99% grind and 1% shine in the sense that 99% of the time, you’re doing
more tedious things to get data, gathering data, and 1% is analyzing and making a discovery.
And so, you have to find that field to where you can still enjoy that 99%.