On Friday, I met with my mentor for the last time in 2013. We went over the data collected from my wound healing assay experiment last week. For the most part, my data was as expected. However, there were two wells that did not follow the general trend of my results. Possible error in these two wells could have been that I did not have the same amount of cells in these wells as the other six. Therefore, the graphs of these were significantly lower than the average. However, the cells in these wells caught up to the others after about 15 hours.

I also passaged my BSC-1 cells and MDCK cells. With practice, I am learning how to better passage these cells. The MDCK cells are the hardest to passage because they have tight junctions and are therefore difficult to separate from one another and the bottom of the flask. On Friday, I only used about one drop of cell culture in each of my new flasks because I will not be working with the cells for a few weeks. We do not want the cells to multiply and grow too quickly because they will use up all of the nutrients in the medium. Dr. Keese will be babysitting my cells while I am away, making sure they have enough medium and are healthy and pathogen-free!

Dr. Keese taught me how to manipulate the ECIS software to better understand my data. My favorite function saws the 3D graph option! He showed me how to put my graphs into three dimensions, and how to interpret these results. The 3D graphs plotted time (hours), frequency (hz) and impedance (Z). I would have loved to attach the graph of my results, but I had a bit of trouble getting the data onto my computer. I will try to get these images uploaded onto my blog for my next post. Sadly, I will have to wait until January 10th until my next visit to Applied Biophysics!