Microbial Constellations

On Monday, we viewed the aforementioned epithelial cells under a fluorescence microscope.  These cells were grown to express green fluorescence protein (GFP), which can be viewed under the microscope, as seen below.  Pictures need to be taken quickly, lest the cells begin dying and deform/burst.  To achieve a desirable picture, you must navigate about the slide using knobs attached to the stage below the screen until you reach a patch that displays a good amount of GFP expression.  Take a picture (there is a feature for that on the screen).  You must then turn on the regular trasnmittance so that a picture of the cells as they are (not lit up) can be taken.  This is layered over the previous GFP picture and settings are adjusted to get as clear a picture as possible.  Looking at these clusters of cells, seeing them twinkle, reminded me of what I see when I look up at night (in Cambria, where little air and light pollution exists).

There is great contrast between the expressing cells and the background.  If you were to see the image up close, you'd see that the nucleus of the cell is lit up, with dull cytoplasm surrounding it and the dark outline of the membrane surrounding that.  The nuclei on these are large, since these are mammalian cells, so the bright green takes up most of the cell.

There is quite a bit of background noise in this one.  The contrast should perhaps be adjusted.

This is as good as my mentor could this picture to be.  There is a clear difference between the background and the lit up cells.  If you look closely, you can see microtubules stemming from the cells.  There are some going through mitosis as well.  Pretty cool.

Today, we pressed drug pellets.  I weighed so-and-so milligrams of powdered drug onto a folded wax paper sheet and handed it over to the college intern working with me to press it into a pellet.  it was repetitive and sometimes frustrating work, getting the weight to be within .2. milligrams of that desired. It gave me time to think about time and black holes... thank you Mrs. Pittman and Brian Cox.

After that, I worked on the microtome and talked to Paul about a biofilms project he is working on. Quite fascinating.  

 The glass knives are at top, the resin blocks below them to the fight, a bunch of parts below those, and a package of razors below those (the one with the yellow label.