Day 9

October 19, 2011

Today was an uneventful day. We first watched JM do an experiment where he made different shaped cells. He said that the dishes needed to be washed out several times before putting the cells in just to be extra cautious. Each time the dishes were washed, we had to wait a few minutes before he could wash them again. I think he had to wash them 4 times. He then separated the cells from the media. In order to do that, he added trypsin which is a chemical that cuts proteins into small pieces so that the cells are free from the media. He attached fluorescent molecules to the particles so that different areas of the particles would be indicated under a microscope. He was afraid that the fluorescent molecules would not work because they usually only last up to one year, but it was 5 years old. So then of course we went downstairs for him to look at the particles under the microscope. We were there for about an hour for him to focus the microscope on the different cells. We looked at sphere, rod, and worm cells. The red fluorescence indicated the location of the nanoparticles. The blue showed the Nuclei. And the green indicated the lysosomes. He planned for us to do cell culture but we ran out of time, so he said that we would do it next time.