Maria Nunez's blog

Weeks nine and ten where used to wrap up the work, I did more catching up on cell counts on week eight since week nine was used mostly for other activities. The weekly culture transfers were done on Wednesday for both weeks since Tuesdays where used up. We also performed our daily time points every afternoon. These last two weeks I learnt to perform the ROS assays and ELISAs, these assays take all day to perform and are very time sensitive, so they have to be performed carefully.

Week eight has been pretty slow I’ve had steady cell counting hours and my weekly culture transfers where done as usual, I haven’t had much data to put in but since we will be collecting Pam data from the part of the experiment we just set up I’ll have more Data to put in a few days. The other thing I did this week was make more media since we used up so much of it during our experiment, and acid wash all the bottles we used last week.

Week six was rather uneventful, I spent most of my time cell counting and entering data into an excel sheet. I managed to finish counting all of the cell samples from June and some from May I am still not quite done with those but hopefully they will be done by the end of the summer. I also entered all the PAM (fluorescence) data from June I’m not sure if I’ll be doing the ones from May since there were some issues with those data sets, but I will be collecting the ones from the next part of the experiment.

This week has been a busy I didn’t get to do many cell counts this time around since most of my time was spent with other things. Since some people in my lab are preparing for a cruise on the 19^th I have been helping out by washing bottles that they will need to take with them, and by Friday all of them where washed and ready. I also spent all of Thursday filtering 800 ml’s of sea water to help out in the lab as well.

This week was a short one and mostly involved cell counts. I managed to reach my 15 counts a day mark, so far my record is 17 though that might go down since the slides I am counting are becoming more populated, and I may have to start diluting the samples soon in order to count the cells more accurately. I have not yet decided if I want to increase my goal for now I think it’s best to keep it on the safe side and stay at 15 until I see how it goes for the next week.

This past week has been a busy one, I have spent as much time as I possibly can on getting more cell counts done, my goal is to try to get through at least 15 samples a day or preferably more so far I can finish about ten in 2 hours or in three for the slides with higher cell concentrations. I have also been reading over protocols for ROS assay and saxitoxin ELISA, since I will be needing these when I get further into my experiment and I want to get familiar with what I will have to do now instead of waiting and learning it all on the spot.

The first week was just full of so much information and I was fortunate enough to start from day one. My mentor showed me how things work in the lab and on the first day I learned how to do cell counts, and culture transfers as well as helping her record data for her current experiment. On tuesday I was taught how to make media and acid washes, the rest of the week I took time to read papers that would help me gain a better understanding of my project. The second week was prety much dedicated to cell counts.