Day 18

November 29, 2011

I didn't start until pretty late today because he had a long class today. But once we started we once again made a gel but we used a wider channel. I wish I could find a picture of the channel to show you so you could have a better understanding of what the channel does and how it works. Kellin wanted to try to make a wider gel to see if it would make a better gradient. Since we were trying to make a wider gel, we obviously had to use more solution to make it. We took the whole process a whole step further today and actually electrospun the gel. Electrospinning is when polymers are spurt onto the gel to make fibers which is stuck on this very rapidly spinning wheel. The reason for this is to try to align all the fibers to be going straight up and down the gel. The purpose of aligning them straight is that once the gradient is placed in the rat, the proteins will moved directly through the gradient from one side of the nerve to the other. When he first tried it, it didn't work because he accidently used the wrong polymer to make the fibers. The polymer was too viscous to be able to be electrospun. Then he tried again with the correct polymer and it did work! He still had to check under the microscope though to se if the fibers were aligned correctly. Surprisingly, they were aligned pretty straight even though it was the first trial. He felt pretty proud of himself!