Michael King - Week 8 - Loh Lab UCSF

Last week was a great week, as we were able to produce some very good results that were consistent with my postdoc's hypothesis. My postdoc will be on vacation for my last week, so we focused a lot this week on making sure I could do western blots on my own for the last week. Western blots are an important experiment in determining protein expression, and it really isn't too hard as my postdoc has already optimized his protocol. We conducted our final experiments on the cell cultures, and froze them down on Friday, as they will not be needed for this next week. Everything else has been going smoothly, and our lab also went out for lunch together on Monday. Next week a lot of people will not be in lab, though. When things are going well sometimes there is not always much to write about. I finally got a few more pictures of the equipment in my lab.

 An example of the results from the experiments we conducted. Above is a graph representing a cell titer glo assay, measuring proliferation of different cell samples treated with drugs. The bottom is the western blot of the cells treated with drugs to identify induction of certain protein expression.

One of the three hoods in my lab, where cell culturing is conducted to ensure sterility. The large centrifuge is in the background, and this is where I spent most of my mornings in lab.

 The setup for preparing the Vicell samples to measure cell viability. The flasks contain the various cell lines, and the small tubes in the front hold the samples. On the side are boxes of pipette tips, which we often run out of.

 Something new we got at our lab, the metal beads replaced the water normally in our heater. It is used to warm up cell media and various things used in cell culturing. The metal beads will help prevent contamination that might have resulted from dirty water continuously being heated, but they do not heat up as quickly.

 An important piece of equipment in lab, a microscope is especially important in checking for contamination in cell cultures.

 My flasks among some others in the incubator, which regulates the temperature and CO2 content. Incubators should not have any smell, and a strange odor usually indicates some sort of contamination, which was an issue in one of our two incubators.

This is the lab bench I work at with my postdoc. Lots of pipettes and multichannels along with various chemicals needed to process cells for the various experiments he conducts. Although it might look a bit cluttered, we utilize pretty much everything in this picture on a fairly regular basis.

My postdoc is in Alaska right now, and I will have to perform two full western blots by myself this week, but I am definitely ready for it. My time here is almost coming to an end, but I have definitely learned a lot about working in a lab.