WISE journal entry #22

Name: Leah Gerald

Entry: #22 (5/10/2012)

WISE Week:11

Written on Date:5/13/2012

Mentor: Sagar

today, sagar was planning on using a flow-cytometry machine. we needed to use this machine because they needed to look at specific protein the cells produce (one in particular, but I cant remember the name) that will help them classify/ know/ find stem cells in the cancer cells. this protein is found in cells that self regulate (a stem cell-like behavior), which is why they are trying to spot out the cells that produce it. the first part of the day was spent quantifying the cells, because we needed at least half a million cells for the machine. after they were  measured out and spun down a couple times, we added antibodies in the cells which should attach to the protein of interest and the machine will light up the cells with the antibodies attached, thus proving if or if not the cells express the protein of interest. the cytometer does this basically by sorting the cells. it takes them all, one at a time and sorts them into cells populations. with this information, the machine created several graphs which had many clustered areas that my mentors sectioned and noted the differences in the different samples. there was a control, and for all the other samples, if it differed from the control, that showed how much it expressed the protein of interest