WISE journal entry # 16

Name: Leah Gerald

Entry: #16 (4/17/2012)

WISE Week: 8

Written on Date:4/23/2012

Mentor: Sagar


today was the day that a large accumulation of my mentors works came together. we looked at the brain slices they had taken from the mice they injected tumors in after months of preparation. first they had to accumulate and culture the cells, then once they had enough, they had to inject them into the mice, then, BEFORE the mice died, they had to extract the brains and freeze them. then another member of the lab had to take those mice brains and meticulously slice them into tiny slices to put under the microscope. then they had to add different types of staining, which they had to deduce which type of staining they used (different for different cell types) after all of this, they had to then sort the sections of the brain they took into slides with cancerous cells on them, slides without, and find the slides where the point of injection is obvious, because that area should have the largest concentration of cancer cells, and also, it helps as a reference point. ONLY after all this can they make deductions about the cells they are working with, and even then, they weren't fully sure of everything. there were sections of the brain that looked very strange to me, so I asked my mentor about them, but they didn't know what they were. so there are still things they do not know.