Research through Biomedical Mentoring Program

     


     DURING the spring quarter, I participated in a program that I found out about through the University of Cincinnati's Honors Program. I worked underneath PhD students there in order to form a project and learn the procedures that were necessary to complete it. What follows will be more of a picture blog than anything. And it is through the visual imagery that I hope to explain what my experience was like.

     MY first day in the lab, I was given a binder and a notebook. Though I didn't know why it was necessary at first, I soon became aware. There is a lot of information to keep track of when going through the motions of genetics and molecular biology. A few visits into the lab and I decided on the fly that I wanted to do immunostaining. I had heard about it before and it seemed the most interesting, if only because I would be able to see vibrant color in my results instead of only a bunch of numbers and statistics. I quickly came to regret that decision, and here's why:

YOU WILL SPEND COUNTLESS HOURS IN FRONT OF THIS

     THIS is what an immunofluorescence assay really boils down to. The left is a picture of a standard immunofluorescent microscope, the Olympus BX61. There is a camera on top and software loaded on the computer that allowed me to take pictures from what I saw on the microscope stage. Then, I used the software to make the colors more vibrant for quantification of cells positive for a variety of markers.

courtesy of greiner bio-one (http://us.gbo.com/bioscience/products/14/)

     BUT, I'm getting ahead of myself. I did prepare the slides for visualization with the microscope. To do that, I had to use coverslips on which the heart cells were grown and use the 6-well culture plate here to go through a series of washings  and stainings in order to mount it on a slide. I always used DAPI to stain the nucleus blue, and mounting media, but other than that, the stain changed based on what genetic marker we were trying to make visible and quantify.

     THOUGH the basis of my project focused on trying to determine the efficiency of the cell lines to differentiate into another type of cell. However, the program, at least for me, was mainly about gaining experience. I learned to work from a protocol, some of which are posted here. I learned about immunofluorescence, PCR, gel electrophoresis as a tool to check PCR and other genetic tests, and more.