WISE Journal Entry #9

Name: Leah Gerald

Entry: #9 (3/13/2012)

WISE Week: 5

Written on Date:3/15/2012

Mentor: Sagar


Today was a somewhat slow day. It was slow because there was a lot of very specific things that had to be done, so I wasn't able to actually do anything with my own hands, so I spent most of my time watching. Nathaniel and Sagar were both working on separate parts of the same experiment. Nathaniel was prepping some proteins to act as a sort of "control" for what Sagar was doing, and Sagar was working on extracting proteins from 2 different cell plates, one with YAP (the gene that controls a cells ability to stop or start making more cells) and one with YAP knocked out. Each cell plate had an array of different dilutions of a chemical to see how it will be affected. Later, once the cells were all properly treated, he would test the protein levels in these cells in comparison to what Nathaniel was doing. Nathaniel was basically setting up a standard curve created by the DNA of the same cells, but without the chemicals in it to compare. To see the difference, since we cannot see DNA, what they do is compare the proteins the DNA creates. YAP makes a specific protein, and they can tell if they were able to actually knock down YAP and to what extent by looking at the proteins created. to see the proteins, they use a process called PCR (polymerase chain reaction) that replicates the DNA enough times to create enough proteins and a visible difference between the different amounts. I didn't get to see all of this, because I left before they were able to see the proteins, but I did get to watch most of the progress. It was fairly slow because it was a lot of pip-petting and very specific, small measurements that needed to be made. near the end, they also had a mouse they had infected with the cordoma cells (cancerous cells that infect the area of the brain nearer to the spine) that had recently died, and they needed to open it up and extract the cells. Sagar showed me the mouse, and how the cordoma caused the mouses back to become crooked and a large growth to appear on his back, but by this time, it was already 4:30, and I had to leave before the action.