Day 6

October 11, 2011

Today was my first day at my real project. It was exciting to finally see what I was going to be doing. The building that I am in on Tuesdays, the Smith building, is a lot newer than Maryland Hall, and it was very obvious as soon as I walked in. The building was 10 times nicer and twice the size than Maryland Hall. Once we arrived at the lab, there were multiple graduate students working in there as well. The lab was also much nicer and larger. My mentor, Kellin, started by explaining again what my project was. In short, I will be looking at cut nerves, and trying to figure out a way to reconnect one side to the other. In order to do this, there are two options. One way is to use electro spun fibers. The second way is to make a gradient. I will be focusing on making a gradient. When making a gradient, the goal is to be able to move protein from one side to the other. So if the protein is attracted to the cell, then it will want to move from a lower concentration to a higher concentration. And if the protein repels the cell, then it will want to move from a higher concentration to a lower concentration. So we took 5% w/v Gel Ma. It contains 0.5% Irgacure which allows MA groups to react. Then we made 20 micrograms/ml of GDNF from 3 microliters of 833 micrograms/ml. To figure out all of the calculations, we needed to do stoichiometry. Then we used a PDMS strip with a channel and placed the Gel MA into the channel. On top of one side of the strip, we put a big drop of 20 micrograms/ml GDNF. And on the other side of the strip, we put a little drop. The point of this was to make a gradient with a higher concentration on one side and a lower concentration on the other. The first time we did this, he did the whole thing and I watched. Then for the second time, he let me do everything, and he just guided me through the steps. It took me a few tries to get everything right, but he was very patient about it. Next Tuesday, we will look at the gradient we made under their high-tech microscope.