Mirela M. is a Grade 12 student with a great passion for biochemistry. She found inspiration in the global pandemic and has been working for the last eight months on a research project related to COVID-19. We invite you to read below the fascinating story of her endeavour.
HOW IT ALL STARTED
I study A level Chemistry, Biology, Mathematics and Statistics, and I had long wished to start a research project of my own, including all of these subjects, that would mark my debut in the scientific domain.
When the global pandemic struck, I got highly invested in virology and into the process of deciphering COVID-19. That’s when I had some ideas cross my mind: everybody is surrounded by all kinds of sanitizers in this period. There has been a highly significant increase in hospitalizations due to voluntary or accidental ingestion of disinfectants since the virus outbreak. From pulling out lots of medical case studies, I came to the conclusion that the ingestion of very small amounts of disinfectants like bleach or isopropyl alcohol actually causes no damage to the human body. The blood cells don’t hemolyze, the small amount of acetone produced in the liver is insignificant, and no metabolic pathway is damaged.
Intrigued, I spent two weeks in my bedroom brainstorming, researching, and planning: could I find a very small concentration of disinfectant that does minimal damage to blood cells, but is strong enough to potentially destroy bacteria or viruses?
HOW LONG DID IT TAKE?
Since I couldn’t find evidence that anyone else has ever done what I planned to do, it was like working in the dark. I have worked on this research for 7 months now, and I am not nearly finished. My wish is to bring my research to big, highly equipped laboratories (perhaps from next year, in a University laboratory) in order to have more accurate results that I could interpret in many ways, and help other scientists by supplying them with my data.
During spring and summer, I spent many hours per week doing online research and strategizing my approach. From the end of August until now, I have spent time in the lab performing numerous trials.
WHAT WERE THE CHALLENGES?
First of all, I needed to get the most important part of the research experiment- blood samples. After having numerous weird conversations with owners of abattoirs (“yes, I only want the blood, not the meat”, “yes, I want 2 liters, and I need it to be very fresh.”, “It’s for an experiment, I promise”) I finally managed to get some pig blood from a village slaughterhouse. The most difficult part of the blood handling stage (apart from the disgusting smell) was its quick coagulation – I spent a lot of time researching and asking biomedical scientists and doctors about how human blood is stored for testing. My concern was that my chosen anticoagulant solution (sodium citrate) would alter the pH too much and cause the red blood cells to denature, stopping me from getting any data. I wasn’t able to know if that would happen or not until I actually tried the experiment, but thankfully it turned out fine.
One other great issue was the available apparatus. For my investigations, the equipment in the school lab wouldn’t suffice – I needed to get my hands on devices found at universities in Bucharest. Since everything was closed due to the lockdown, I had to find a way to work with my limited supplies, or drop my project altogether. Since the latter wasn’t an option, I spent a long time coming up with a setup that would help me find the oxygen saturation level in blood samples. The process was as terrifying as it was exciting – I had to rely on my physics knowledge and improvise in order to figure out an accurate way to get data. Ultimately, my creation was finished.
The only device that could measure oxygen percentages I could get my hands on was a normal pulse oximeter that’s used in hospitals. The issue was that the blood needed to flow through a finger in order to show a reading on the pulse oximeter, and the blood I had was drawn.
I decided to try doing a model of a finger: I suctioned the blood (because blood is dynamic in the human finger) through the tube of a potometer (device that is used for photosynthesis, because I had no other tube I could use). I inserted that tube into a hollow chicken sausage, because it was the best representation of meat in a finger. I wrapped that sausage in the finger of a nitrile glove (not latex, because I was relying on light absorption of the blood).
I was prepared for it not to work, because the method I came up with was sort of ridiculous. But it did!! I got accurate results even from the first trials. You can read an abstract of my project
WHAT’S NEXT?
Last week I performed tests on the bacteria E. coli, and I’m still interpreting the results. I am going to keep working on this project as I’ve loved every minute of it, even the times when I thought I had reached a dead end, or that it was impossible. Through this project, I have gained a sneak peek of the life I want to have in the future – the life of a scientist.
