Kirsty the Scientist

As I was talking about earlier this week, I've often been running more than one experiment at the same time during a week. But today, the differences between the two experiments seemed quite striking!  The two experiments are to look for two different indicators to suggest that my protein of interest is involved in making my cell type increase during cell stress/inflammation:  1. Look for the protein itself. This involves separating the proteins using electrophoresis (pulling the proteins through a polyacrylamide gel using an electric current to draw the proteins through the tiny pores of the bell - the smaller proteins get to the bottom of the gel quicker as they can wiggle through the holes faster. Then using a method called Wet Transfer, which pulls the protein out of the gel and onto a PVDF membrane - a technique that uses litres of buffer.  2. Looking for the genes that are expressed - suggesting that the cell is producing the proteins and using the part of the...

Forget everything I've said about being busy so far - today was the most hectic and experiment-filled day I've had yet!  There was a lot to get done today - finishing off longer experiments from last week, plating out cells ready for this week's experiments, data analysis of a couple of different experiments - all on top of a Masters student, who is still shadowing me, following my every move and asking questions about each step. All good multi-tasking practice, and reminding me why each step is important, but I had to be on the ball at all times! 

Normally, I only post new blogs on weekdays, but I've treated you all this week to a bonus weekend post to answer a question that I've kept quite under wraps throughout this blog - what is this project I'm working on actually about?! via GIPHY Well, for a start, there is a reason I have been a little bit elusive on this topic. Technically, the work I do belongs to the university, not me. Therefore officially, the information I gather is not my property to share with the public and the world - and this blog is open for anyone and everyone to read. And as I've said before, my subject area - as you'd expect - is quite niche, meaning this blog could be easily found with a quick google search if I was specific! Although I love how science is such a collaborative subject and sharing research can open your eyes to new angles and opinions on topics - it's not worth the hassle and the sabotage of my degree just to include the specifics of my project on the blog! ...

Still processing the information gathered from last week's experiments (results collected on Friday). Reprobing the Western blots with more antibody to compare the two proteins we're looking for.  Also learnt how to use an 'alternative Excel' today - called GraphPad Prism, which is a bit better than Excel for producing the lovely good-looking diagrams and graphs ready for publication and to pop in my dissertation.  All in all, these first results make a good start to the project, and has given a few more clues as to the direction this project is going to take over the next couple of weeks.