Kirsty the Scientist

Today was all about getting some more writing done and analysing all the data gathered so far. Making sure the lab work I do over these last few days is the most suitable and efficient use of my time to add to my project write-up. To be honest, the day flew by and then I was off to Code Club and back home to crash into bed!

Today was all about taking a step back from all the slightly manic rush to generate data and take a look at everything I've gathered so far, analyse it properly and decide on the next step. So today, I tried to reflect on my results and start to form and build a story from my findings - and remembering to pop into tissue culture to split and feed my cells!  Here's a quick pic of my cells through the eyepiece of the microscope: (not the most graceful way to photograph cells!) 

Today felt like a really productive day, despite all the lab work actually being very repetitive!  Got all the figures from the previous results looking really good today and sent them off to my supervisor to be looked over. And stimulate the cells at multiple timepoints across today, and made up the samples, ready for this week's experiments!  Busy, busy, busy! Definitely, eat, sleep, lab at the moment!

Similar to yesterday, (and most days nowadays!) I was working on two goals:  1. Prep more cells for use for a new experiment for this week.  2. Detect the secondary antibody signals using the Western blots using two slightly different methods (which I can compare to see which is better). Li-Cor detects the signals using fluorescence using a shiny new machine the institute has; whereas ECL is the standard method which uses light.  We also had our first full group meeting today, where the research team gets together and we can discuss the results of everyone's experiments - which will now become a bit more of a regular occurrence! 

After this whole debacle of the lab relocation, the hunt for the missing everything and the waiting around for each thing to be passed through all its initial checks and inductions; today was FINALLY the start of my first real experiment!   Using the plates prepped yesterday, this morning was a slightly earlier start in the tissue culture lab to serum starve the cells (which means they have a media containing all the nutrients and antibiotics they need to grow, but without the extra growth factors and signalling molecules (e.g. cytokines) that comes with the BSA, used in the enriched media they have been growing in up to this point). Then we waited most of the day to allow the serum starve to last as long as possible before starting the first timepoint of the experiment - inducing an inflammatory response in the cells with cytokines 24hrs before I assess the response the cells had and find out if they produced the protein I am looking for tomorrow. It's going to be a busy next fe...

Seeding cells is the process of taking the cells that have been happily growing in their flask full of everything they could ever need, and transferring them into a vessel that is much easier for experiments! This more useful container for cell experiments are know as 6-well and 96-well plates, basically a plastic tray containing 6 small or 96 tiny flat bottomed cylinders, which looks a little like this:  The cells were 'seeded' onto the plate, with a supply of culture medium, and left to grow overnight in an incubator. Tomorrow morning, hopefully all the cells will have stuck (adhered) to the base of the plates and will look under the microscope like the 'eye' shape instead of the perfectly round shape you see when they are lifted off the base with Trypsin so they can be transferred. 

A quiet Friday today, setting up all the computers in the new office space and giving them a quick clean. It was really nice to start to see the office coming together - it's just round the corner from the lab so it will now be so much easier to be productive whilst waiting for parts of experiments to finish.  We were also waiting today for the cells and our booking in the tissue culture lab to split the cells into 4 batches, giving the cells lots of room to grow over the weekend. 

Today was mostly a organisation day - working out the action plan for next week so we can squeeze in a full experiment and actually get some results for my project by the end of this week!  We also checked on the cells under the microscope to check they were growing OK and to change the culture medium (or cell food!) to a fresh batch. I could see the cells stuck to the base of the cell culture flask in their classic fibrous shape: (looks a bit like an eye) 

This morning we headed across town with a box of dry ice to collect the cells from the liquid nitrogen store. We took them back to tissue culture to be defrosted, resurrected and ready to grow over the next few days. Also finished off the Western blot today, so should get some good results from those tomorrow!  Although it's been less than a week so far, I'm really enjoying working with and getting on really well with everyone in my research group. Now we're actually getting on with some proper lab work, I'm so excited for the next few weeks!