WISE journal entry #21

Name: Leah Gerald

Entry: #21 (5/9/2012)

WISE Week:11

Written on Date:5/13/2012

Mentor: Sagar

today, the first thing we were to work on was an RNA isolation procedure, which I have never seen before. basically, the RNA isolation procedure is, as the name denotes, to isolate RNA. to do so, we had to pour a bunch of buffers through the RNA and spin it down several times to wash it of contaminants so when looking at the RNA later, nothing will get in the way, like DNA and contaminants. cells don't always use all their genes, so looking at the RNA shows us which genes they are ACTIVELY using. this procedure didn't take very long, and for the rest of the day, there were a lot of cells that needed to be re-fed new media, so I spent the most of the day in the cell culture room doing just that. I probably added media to 20-30 flasks. also, Sagar showed me some recently acquired xeno-grafted cordoma cells. they are called this because foreign cordoma cells were placed in a mouse, and then extracted. because the cells were placed in a body, they are mixed up with many other cells, so the plate with the xeno-grafted cordoma cells had a mixture of more than just cordoma cells.