Science; not all beer and bacterial culture

Today was a long one! So time for a long post ^^ I was in labs 9am - 7pm treating / transfecting my cells. Unfortunately not all went to plan. My HeLa cells had aggregated at the centre of their wells as they were incorrectly mixed after seeding, a problem when you want uniform transfection and easy counting. To add to the days hiccups, thanks to an oversight / note making error on my part, I delayed the addition of my transfection reagent and added an incorrect volume to the wells! High school style error, needless to say I wasn't impressed with myself. Thankfully our main plasmid transfections went reasonably well and I was able to salvage what I could from the treatments. We'll find out tomorrow to what extent it's influenced our results, and if the experiments have to be repeated.

Wasn't on top form today

As a silver lining, I guess it's best to make these mistakes now while I'm learning rather than during a dissertation or whilst starting a new job! Certainly won't be making the same mistake twice.

The cell culture area

 Cell culture is new ground for me so I guess it's understandable there'd be some growing pains (no pun intended, heh) getting used to all the habits required to maintain an aseptic work area and keeping nasty organisms out of your cells. I'm sure it'll get drilled into me in time! Not tounching outside surfaces, keeping within the laminar flow zone, sterilizing with ethanol. And a thousand more things that you are required to do instinctively! Even writing up my own protocols and mixing my own reagents is new, but I'm sure I'll get used to it sooner rather than later. *fingers crossed*

A note on our cells

Meet Henrietta Lacks (or rather her cells), a tool no medical biologist can do without

In our experiments we're using HeLa cells. They are a biologists human cell line of choice for most applications and have been fundamental in the develompent of innumerable medical breakthroughs, which have saved the lives and improved the wellbeing of millions. They were the first immortalised human cell line, isolated by George Gey from the cervical cancer cells of Henrietta Lacks, without her knowlege during the 50's. She was a young black woman living in the harsh poverty-stricken reality of 1950s America, and never lived to witness the medical revolution she helped set in motion. Her story and that of the family she left behind is beautifully retold in the emotional book ''The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks'' by Rebecca Skloot (http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Immortal-Life-Henrietta-Lacks/dp/1400052173), which I would thoroughly recommend to anyone. I felt compeled to know the story of the woman who gave us this amazing tool before I set about utilising them, to hopefully give her a measure of credit and respect that was never afforded to her during her all too brief lifetime.

Henrietta Lacks (1920-1931)

There has been some 20 tonnes of HeLa cells produced since Henriettas death, orders of magnitude more cells that ever existed in her body. Her cells have been exposed to innumerable chemicals and drugs to assess their effects on human cells, they have been exposed to the energy of nuclear weapons and launched into space. Without her cells our knowlege of cancer, HIV/AIDS, Polio and a vast catalogue of other medical conditions and scientific lines of inquiry would be massively impoverished.

Hopefully in the next few weeks they'll help me shine some light on autophagy!

That's that for tonight I think. Back to the lab first thing tomorrow. Hopefully everything will go swimmingly this time =)