Week 6 – Starting Lab Work and Interpreting Graph

Christopher Y -

Hello everyone,

This week I was in San Diego for spring break and was unable to get much work done on the project. For this blog post, I will be describing the lab activities I started last week and do some more bioinformatics work. Last week, I had a lab orientation on Monday where our group toured the two bioscience buildings and got basic instructions on how to work the autoclaves and dishwashers for lab equipment. The rest of the week was mainly focused on getting used to the lab space and where different equipment is located. In order to get access to the lab, I filed for a “cat card” that can unlock the doors to the floors I will be working on.

Below, I have attached a Cxcr3 expression survival graph (Fig. 1) similar to the ones in week 4. Unlike the previous graphs, this one is not in my mentor’s paper and was made for my project analyzing Cxcr3.

Fig. 1) Survival graph for Cxcr3 expression with relapse free status1
Looking at this graph, it seems as if patients with low Cxcr3 expression have a lower “probability of survival” (relapse) than those with high Cxcr3 expression. Attached below (Fig. 2) are results describing the statistical significance of the graph in Figure 1.
Fig. 2) Log-rank test of the Cxcr3 survival curve in figure 12
A common p value used for determining significance in patient samples is 0.05. In this case, the p value was determined by the log rank test and p>0.05 was considered insignificant. This means that the results in the graph are essentially 27.67% due to chance, and the difference between the two groups in Figure 1 is not significant.
Thank you for reading my blog post this week, and please feel free to comment.

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Comments:

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    Rahul Patel
    Hey Christopher, it sounds like you’re settling into the lab and starting to get the ball rolling. That survival graph is interesting, though I see that the p-value doesn’t quite show statistical significance—hopefully, this is just a small bump in the road. I’ve gotta admit, at least with lab work, there’s no guessing—data doesn't lie (unless it’s misinterpreted). Speaking of which, do you have any strategies in mind for tackling the experiments involving the mutant Cxcr3 gene and seeing if it’ll really make a difference in the migration process?
    March 27, 2025 at 12:25 am - Reply
    adam_b
    Hi Chris! This such a cool project! What software did you use to make that graph?
    March 28, 2025 at 6:11 pm - Reply
    camille_bennett
    HI Chris, great that you are getting into the lab. Was this your first experience in a professional lab setting? Was there anything surprising?
    April 1, 2025 at 10:46 am - Reply

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