Publishing, Analyzing, and Reading: August
Read to see some learnings from the past month, some stuff I've done, and to (hopefully) gain some value recommendation-wise.
Hey!
Last night, I heard oxygen and magnesium were going out… and I was like O-Mg!!
Welcome back to my newsletter. Hope you had a not-too-rainy August.
For those who don't know, I'm Nina Khera. You may have met me during a meeting, or at the latest networking event in Boston. I'm a 14-year-old human longevity researcher who's working on projects from topics spanning cellular senescence (zombie cells) to epidermolysis bullosa (skin disease)!
This month I’ve been focusing on Biotein, learning more about coding, helping out Lygenesis with a project, getting my paper with the Gladyshev lab published, and researching brain aging a lot more.
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Biotein
This month has been focused on getting onboarded with our investors (the 1517 Fund), working on assay development planning/experiments with a partner company, planning physiological relevance testing of our assay and the partnerships to get that done, and figuring out the logistics for many details of the actual product.
First, Biotein is very proud to say that we’re a company that’s part of the 1517 Fund family! We’re part of their Invisible College track, and are happy to say that we’ve been onboarded this month. We’ve also been working with a partner on developing our assay and figuring out the chemistry behind everything, which has been a really cool experience (and we’re so excited to see the physical product).
We’ve also been planning the testing of our assay that relates to physiological relevance - so basically seeing that our test is linked to age and aging-related diseases - and have been in talks with some companies about working with them. Last of all, we’ve been working this month on figuring out the logistics of the product (legalities, packaging, pricing, etc).
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Mindsets and Philosophy
Here are some thoughts I’ve been having!
You have to like/love yourself to do the same to others. I feel like it’s often that people are insecure/don’t feel good about themselves in relationships, so they use them as a way to feel better about themselves - but this can be counterproductive and hurt the other person. Being mainly secure in yourself before you enter relationships creates less clinginess and makes people overall more fulfilled in relationships (from past experience).
Life is sort of like a snowglobe in the sense that you can totally think about how the snow and the scenery looks from the outside, but it’s so so much more lively on the inside (who hasn’t wanted to be inside a snowglobe?). What I gather from the analogy is that you shouldn’t worry too much about how you’re perceived, but care more about how you see your life and how you feel on the inside.
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Getting my paper published
This month has been a bit wild, because I just got my first paper (in collaboration with many awesome scientists at the Gladyshev lab) published in Aging!
Thank you so so much to Dr. Csaba Kerepesi, Dr. Didac Santesmasses, and Dr. Vadim Gladyshev for all your help and for all the work you put into this - I am truly so grateful to have worked with you over the past year.
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Knowledge Bytes
Here are some recommendations from the month!
- Great ice cream: Strawberry ice cream with big (but not too big, otherwise there is a large likelihood of brain freezes) strawberry chunks
- Most random fun thing: Laughter yoga… check it out
- Cool game: Qwirkle or Scrabble (big fan of the latter especially, email me if you want to play a game)
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Shoutouts
Here are some fun shoutouts:
Dr. Moody and Dr. Wolfe - thank you for all your guidance regarding assay development and all your help with Biotein.
Dr. Sanes - thank you for all your cool scientific tidbits and the tip regarding organoids :D.
Javier Noris - Thanks for helping set up everything in regards to the LIN, and Biotein is excited to work with y’all!
Dr. Cheikhi - you have been an awesome mentor and it has been great to work on learning more about the thymus’ gene expression as it ages with you.
1517 Fund - thank you to everyone there for working with us and for all your help + advice already!
Thank you to everyone reading this. Even if I didn't mention you this month. you probably helped me a lot. Thank you!
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Next Month
In September, I’ll be working on developing Biotein’s bio-age test, beginning school again, and coding + researching brain aging a lot more!
Reach out to me if you want to talk about human longevity (or just life sciences in general) or anything else honestly!
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nina-khera-115b5a175/
Personal Website: https://ninakhera.com/
Email: kheranina@gmail.com (or just reply to this email)