A Career in Clinical Science

Well hey there! Wondering what I do for a day job?

Back in college, I was introduced to the cytogenetics program. I was sitting in my Bio 2 class, and I remember listening about the program and taking notes. My classmate said that this wasn't on the test. But I said that I know, this is just so incredible! And that was how my lab love-affair began.

I was originally a bio-education major. I had always loved science, and had wanted to be a high school biology teacher, so I was on that track. I immediately switched to the cytogenetic training program when I heard what it was about!

Cytogenetics has two major fields that we are trained in as interns, prenatal/congenital cytogenetics (genetics that you are born with from your parents, also including a lot of short-stature testing and infertility) as well as cancer cytogenetics. Cytogenetics is looking at the chromosomes of someone, after they have been cultured and harvested, and making diagnoses based on what we find.

My love was the constitutional cyto. In cancer, there can be a TON of different mutations, extra chromosomes, et cetera, and that's obviously why there is cancer. But in congenital disorders, just ONE little mutation somewhere can have a whole variety of disorders with it, and if you have a similar little mutation just a little farther down the chromosome, it causes COMPLETELY different things! Sorry, nerding out here!

So anyways, I did my internship, and got hired at the place I interned with first. It was my absolute DREAM JOB. I was so happy being in charge of culturing and harvesting, learning how to drop slides, being in charge of all the FISH (fluorescence in-situ hybridization) that was coming through, learning how to culture prenatal samples like chorionic villi. I got certified that December, so I am CG (ASCP) certified!

But then October 4th, 2019 happened. I actually got laid off. It was one of my worst days. I can't even fully describe the pain and shock I processed while gathering all my stuff and leaving. There ended up being 20 of us laid off that day.

I ended up lucking out though. A good friend of mine who worked down the hall in Biochemistry had already been planning on quitting that day. She turned in her two week resignation, and they had to immediately fill her position. I was asked if I was interested in biochemistry, and I said yes, though I did tell them that I had literally no biochemistry experience, like not even taking it in college. I ended up getting rehired that next week, and I have been in biochem ever since!

Now, biochemistry is completely different from cytogenetics. It is working with blood, urine and plasma in order to diagnose different metabolic or enzymatic disorders. I was trained on most of the tests my friend ran weekly, and actually have become very skilled in biochem too!

Because of the pandemic and other politics of the company, they completely cut out our classic cyto department and almost all of biochem. It just so happened that the few tests they kept I was the only one trained on, so I have continued running testing.

Since half of the other tests I run were cancelled, I had more time on my hands. So after some pushing, I was also brought into the DNA Isolations lab, where I am doing yet again completely different things! I'm helping to isolate DNA from the blood and saliva samples that we get so the molecular department can run their tests that have been ordered.

So, that's my career in a nutshell! If you have any questions about ANY of it, please feel free to comment or send me a message! I always love sharing science with others!