It's been so long!

Hello, everybody! (Imagine that was said in Gru's voice.)

It has been a while since I posted, which I apologize for, and a lot has happened, both in and out of the lab.

First off, I got college decisions. March was a month of Madness for college basketball players and seniors all over the country. Even though not all the decisions are what I hoped they would be I am happy and excited with the results. Also, CONGRATS to all the seniors! Even if you did not get into your number one, you all got into amazing places and should be proud! Wherever you go you will do amazing things!


Secondly, the lab has experienced some changes. The amount of work to be done in the cell culture room has greatly declined because Dr Lacombe has throw away the cells and begin with fresh cells for the new proteomic  assay. This has given me time to work on data analysis, which there has been plenty of. Luckily, with the help of my trusty friend excel, I was able to knock it all out in a matter of days. Two to be exact.

Lastly, there are far more problems to encounter in the lab than I realized. When doing labs in school, everything is though out and planned for us. The teacher and the students, if they are really paying attention, know what to expect. Very few real, lab-threatening mistakes are made. But in the real lab it's different and when mistakes are made the consequences are greater.

 For example, in the last clonogenic assay we made (  I will do a much more detailed post about it later) the cells did not get distributed the way hey should have been. There were too many cells in wells where there should have been almost none.

Another example: For the proteomic assay, the new cells have to be irradiated. Dr. Lacombe has been trying for the past two weeks to set up a time with the Mayo Clinic, but due to problems they are facing we are unable to get them irradiated as of now. This has a direct impact on the timeline that Dr. Lacombe had worked out to complete the experiments.

Finally, if anyone remembers, there are two parts to this study. One is determining the cellular response of three different cell lines to different radiation therapies and the second is building a radioresistant cell line to determine biomarkers of radiation. For the second study we have been using just the PC3 cell line and the cells have been very difficult to make radioresistant. The other day, while we were discussing the results of the experiments, Dr. lacombe informed me that he had read an article that said the PC3 cell line was known to be radioresisant already. No wonder it's been so difficult. Now, he is looking into possible changing the cell line he uses in the second study.

All in all, these past few weeks have been long, but exciting. Congrats again to everyone!