On Monday, I was required to meet up with HR in order to receive a badge and plan parking. This meeting did not take long and afterward my mentor, Bea, showed me how to do Cell Culture and RNA extraction. After that, we had a lab group meeting in order to discuss a few projects that were happening around the lab. Giselle presented about her trip to a marine lab in Hawaii to collect samples from dolphins that would be used in later experiments. Dr. Somarelli and Dr. Eward then had a spicy noodle eating competition.
On Tuesday, I learned about the Incucyte. It can be used to track cell growth in real time. This is important when trying to look at how the cells are growing and for seeing how many cells to add to a plate or well for experiments. Bea also showed me how to unfreeze cells. This is an important process because if the cells are not thawed quickly then they can die. After that, there was a talk about the differences in treatment response by race in prostate cancer, which is the type of cancer that I learned a lot of my projects would be dealing with. Finally, before I left I received two papers on prostate cancer to read. One of them was the grant for the project that I would be working on and the other was about a process mentioned a lot in the first paper. Both were written by people in the lab.
On Wednesday, I learned about western blotting. This is used to look at different proteins in different ways including what proteins are being expressed, what is interacting with the proteins, and many more options. Part of this process included making a gel which we learned about briefly in Biology.
On Thursday, I got to split my first cell plate. It was a super cool process that I know my project will require me to do a lot of. I took the cell plate I had originally and washed the cells with Phosphate Buffered Saline (PBS) and added in trypsin, a digestive protein that is used to lift the cells off the plate. Then the cell media is added so that the trypsin does not digest the cells before it is put in the incubator for about five minutes. The cells are then rinsed off the plate and put into a tube. This tube is put in a centrifuge, a machine that spins at very high speeds. This brings all the cells to the bottom of the tube creating a cell pellet. All the liquid is removed from the tube before new media is added. The cell pellet is broken up and the new cells and media are added to a new plate.
On Tuesday, I learned about the Incucyte. It can be used to track cell growth in real time. This is important when trying to look at how the cells are growing and for seeing how many cells to add to a plate or well for experiments. Bea also showed me how to unfreeze cells. This is an important process because if the cells are not thawed quickly then they can die. After that, there was a talk about the differences in treatment response by race in prostate cancer, which is the type of cancer that I learned a lot of my projects would be dealing with. Finally, before I left I received two papers on prostate cancer to read. One of them was the grant for the project that I would be working on and the other was about a process mentioned a lot in the first paper. Both were written by people in the lab.
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| creating a gel |
On Wednesday, I learned about western blotting. This is used to look at different proteins in different ways including what proteins are being expressed, what is interacting with the proteins, and many more options. Part of this process included making a gel which we learned about briefly in Biology.
On Thursday, I got to split my first cell plate. It was a super cool process that I know my project will require me to do a lot of. I took the cell plate I had originally and washed the cells with Phosphate Buffered Saline (PBS) and added in trypsin, a digestive protein that is used to lift the cells off the plate. Then the cell media is added so that the trypsin does not digest the cells before it is put in the incubator for about five minutes. The cells are then rinsed off the plate and put into a tube. This tube is put in a centrifuge, a machine that spins at very high speeds. This brings all the cells to the bottom of the tube creating a cell pellet. All the liquid is removed from the tube before new media is added. The cell pellet is broken up and the new cells and media are added to a new plate.
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