Drafting the Data Summary Was Hard, but It Was a Heck of a Rush

Was writing the Mod 1 report easy? No, not at first.

Did I learn something? Oh yeah, I hate writing the results section. But thanks to my partner, it became easier.

When we were given details about the data summary for Mod 1, my lab partner, Alexis, and I started gathering together details for our report. Early on, we agreed on which topics we would take on. I would take on the SMM background and results (Z-scores and chemical structures) of the report, and Alexis would take on introducing FKBP12 and the discussion/future implications.

Although we settled on this early on, I didn’t think it would be hard to construct the pieces of data for the Z-scores, and I wanted to seem self-sufficient on my sections for writing.

When drafting the background and motivation section for SMMs, I found regurgitating information in a clear manner very straightforward to me. Even piecing together my story helped in conjunction with myBut, when writing the results section for our 6 hits for FKBP12, I was stumped. To me, writing the methods or even the background to SMMs both weren’t as hard as explaining why all of our structures had high affinity for binding. I was still stumped after assembling all the figures needed for our report. Maybe it was because I didn’t understand chemical structures as well or because I took 5.12 a year ago. Anyways, it was the middle of M1D7’s lab section, and Alexis and I both hit a standstill on crafting our Mod 1 report.

Because I was a little hungry (and turns out he was, too), I asked Alexis if he wanted to walk with me to grab a Twix bar. As we left 56-302, we went on a walk to discuss a bit of our data and to go get food. During that 10 minute walk, our conversation was mostly about the structural similarities between our binders. Ironically, when walking, we looked at our binders’ structures on our phones (we took pictures of them) and found that all of them had very strong nucleophiles. We then discussed particular assays that we could do, and decided what questions we should ask to analyze how the structures bind with FKBP12 with such high affinity.

After this conversation, it became a lot easier to write each of our own individual sections. I’m almost certain that was probably one of the most scientific conversations I’ve had with anyone thus far.

While the hardest part of writing the data summary was the results section for me, I’ll be sure to work on it more for our Mod 2 Report, and also ask Alexis or the 20.109 staff (Thanks to Leslie and Noreen’s massive 20.109 Saturday OH party :D) for help piecing the results together.