WISE journal entry #12

Name: Leah Gerald

Entry: #12 (4/3/2012)

WISE Week: 6

Written on Date:4/3/2012

Mentor: Sagar


today was an exciting day because I finally got to work under the hood! the main things that they had to get done today was, Sagar needed to do an RNA synthesis, but first, we needed to culture some cells. the breast cancer and breast cells from a while back were becoming confluent (basically there were too many in one container) and they needed to move some from one container to another so the original ones would have room to grow and expand. because it was a task that didn't require too much precision, Sagar let me work with him under the hood. to start with this process, we sucked all the existing media out of the containers. then we added an enzyme called trypsin, which makes the cells disconnect from the base to the flasks. with that done, we shook the containers and made sure all the cells disconnected before we added calcium, which acts as an inhibitor, and stops the trypsin from acting on the cells too much. next, we took the cells in the flasks, and put them in tubes. we then put the tubes in the centrifuge and spun them until all the cells were in a pellet at the bottom. we took the tubes back to the hood and sucked all the trypsin and calcium out of the tubes. once they were all without trypsin, we filled the tubes with media and mixed the cells with the media.we then got new flasks, and put part of the cells in the tubes in the flask, along with some new media and put them back in the incubator.