Day 8

October 18, 2011

Today, we did the same lab as last time but added a few more things. We made several different standards of Gel-MA; 0.5ml,1ml, 5ml, 10ml, and 20ml. Each required the same process but differ in amount. The process did not consist of many steps. The hardest part was the first part; filling the channel with the Gel-MA. It took both of us a few tries to get it, but we both were able to do it eventually. It was difficult because I have to inject the Gel-MA into the tiny channel using a pipette. If I inject it too quickly, it will cause the formation of air bubbles, and then I have to start the whole process over. Every time that I mess up, I have to clean the channel with ethanol before starting over. Last Tuesday, it took my at least 5 attempts to finally get it, but today it only took me 3 tries! Then, we placed 100 microliters over the outlet of the channel. Then, depending on which standard we were making, we put a certain amount of protein solution over the inlet. We then waited for 8 minutes for the standards to settle. Once all of the standards were created, we walked over to a different building in order to have a closer look at the standards. We put them in a typhoon which scans over cells and measures the amount of fluorescence. The typhoon takes approximately 13 minutes to scan the cells. The results showed up on a computer attached to the typhoon. The more concentrated ones were darker while the less concentrated ones appeared lighter on the computer. By this point, it was about 4:20, so we had to speed walk back to the other building so I could get back in time!