Fifth Week in Research Program

Monday
Today was very time consuming day for me. I performed one task all day and that was harvesting and collecting data from my activity assay. The thing with this experiment was there was a lot of times that you didn’t do anything but you couldn't start anything else because you had to attend to that experiment. Once I collected all my results I put them into my PowerPoint. Later on in the evening we met with Dr. Lambros.

Tuesday
Today I worked on my project all morning because the graduate student who works with me had an experiment that she had to work on for her project. After lunch I came back and set up another MTT assay because my last one I tried to do with irradiation didn't go well because I messed up. I accidentally forgot to take out the old media so in my wells I had new and old media. I also split my cells so they want be to confluent.

Wednesday
When I arrived in my lab this morning, I did my calculations for my MTT assay. I had to calculate the number of mM that I was going to use. Then I went of the wording and final touches on my PowerPoint. After completing this and going over it with the graduate student, I went to the library to do some research.

Thursday
For the first half of the morning, I completed my clonogenic assay that was irradiated. I washed my cells and put a solution on them to make sure they were fixed on the plate. Then I stained them with crystal violet and washed it off. While waiting for it to dry I worked on my PowerPoint. After lunch, I probed for my Beta-actin for my western blot to show that I loaded my samples equally. Then I counted my colonies that were found on my clonogenic, for both the H2O2 and irradiation. I added these new pieces of data to my PowerPoint. Now it is complete.

Week 4 in the Lab

Monday: July 4, 2005
HOLIDAY! Didn't have to work.

Tuesday: July 5, 2005
I came back to work today and found out that my mentor had broke his collar bone over the holiday weekend. After finding this out I worked on my project for half the morning, then I finished my western blot. I also finished my MTT assay by stainingmy cells and finding out which ones were dead and alive. I should be able to see the results by tomorrow. Near the end of the day I split my cellss because they were 100% confluent and I needed them tomorrow with a 80% confluency.

Wednesday: July 6, 2005
Today was a long day. I had to set up 3 different assays because the irradiator is now working. These will be the ones i will present. I took pictures of my projects and what I was doing so people can have a visual for my powerpoint. I had to also redue my western because I had probed for the wrong thing. So I had to re-probe for catalase. I split my cells again cause they grow so fast. I split it so small, hoping that they will not be confluent by Monday. I stained my clonogenic assay, the one with H2O2, and will count the cell colonies to put in my data.

Thursday: July 7, 2005
The first thing I did in the morning was treat my three assays with the drug 3-AT. Only certain ones got the drug and the others would get radiation. I had a section meeting during lunch so they provided us with lunch. My mentor is the section head of Radiation Biology. He reminded us of his interview that he had with WXII that would be on today at 5:00 and 6:00. After all of that I went back to the lab and finished working on project.

Week 3 in Program

Monday: June 27, 2005
Well I found out that I am going to have to do my project a different way because the irradiation machine broke. I will be working with PAm for the rest of the summer on my project. Today I started my clonogenic assay and my MTT assay. I bascially just plated my cells and wait to they adhere before I treat them. This took all day to do. There was a lab meeting at 4:00 and my mentor presented a research article.

Tuesday: June 28, 2005
Today I added my drugs to my clonogenic assay cells and starvd my MTT assay cells of serum for six and a half hours. I also discovered that a plate of my 8gy cells have been bumped and split and might cause some flaw in my results but hopefully my cells had already stuck to the plate. I worked on my powerpoint presentation with Pam.

Wednesday: June 29, 2005
Thsi morning I talked about and worked on my project by making slides for my powerpoint. I then was told what kind of test will need to be performed to show some relavant data. After lunch I did my first western blot to see how much protein is in my RT2 cells and if it is over expressed in the cell line.

Thursday: June 30, 2005
I finished up my western blot today and was told that it was very good and useful. The data was a little off but it was still good. After viewing my results I had to treat my cells for my clonogenic assay with H2O2. This stayed on my cells for 45 minutes, then I took it off and put new media on some cells and added the drug and media to the others. I will wait seven days before counting my cell colonies. Started a new western blot to see a different effect on my cells and slso started another MTT assay. I split a plate of RT2 cells (1:50) because I want them to be confluent by Tuesday when I come back.

Second Week: June 20-24

Monday - June 20, 2005
This was a busy day. The first thing I did this morning was check my cells to see how confluent they were and if they were ready to be split. I found out that one of my dishes had some dirt in it. After checking my cells I performed a PCR assay, which helps you point out a specific gene you are looking for by making billions of copies of that one gene. This took up the whole morning. After lunch, I split my cells without any supervision. Then around 4:00 my lab went to its Monday lab meeting were Raquel presented an article in the press.

Tuesday - June 21, 2005
Today I was very sick from my allergies. Therefore my lab supervisor allowed me to go home early after lunch because I had nothing else left to do for the day. But I did see Pam do radiation on her cells this morning and it was a rather quick process to do. We also sat down and talked about my project. I will be working with the RT2 cells, which are rat glioma cells. All my testing will start Monday so I won't run into the holidays.

Wednesday - June 22, 2005
All day today I worked with Raquel on my Northern Blotting. This is a technique in which you are looking at just the RNA samples and excluding the DNA and protein. I realized that my hands weren't as steady as I thought and missed up a couple of times. It might have also been because I was sick and couldn't really control my nerves. This was a long process and it took all day.

Thursday - June 23, 2005
Today I split my RT2 cells so that they would be confluent enough for me to use on Monday. My dilution was 1:20 so they should be still good. I also made my media for the cells because it had run out from other peoples use of it. During lunch there was a section meeting and they introduced me to the lab. After that I researched my project and worked on my website.

First Week in Program: June 13-17

This first week in the CERTL program has been really slow for me. I have learned how to do one technique called cell culture, were you treat and split cells. I have only split the cells. I had to learn the protocol for doing the splitting. You split the cells in order for them to continue to grow, so that they can be treated later on learned that I will be working with tumor cells called glyoma cells for my project for the six weeks. I enjoy the aspect of Biology in college but I don't believe that I could work in a lab all day because I am a people person. I watched one of the graduate students do a clonogenic assay, which was very long and tedious to do. It takes a couple of days to complete the whole thing. I realized that the main goal in these labs is to focus on cancer and how to cure it, which is a very useful thing that he world needs now. Radiation is a key treatment for curing the cancer, plus the use of drugs. Hopefully next week I will have more work to do and talk about for my next entry. I did enjoy getting to know and meet all of the CERTL participants during the lunches and eating together.

Pictures of Me

• Here are a few pictures of me so you can get an idea of how I am.