First Day At TGen

As the title says, today was my first day at TGen! Today I found out what I was going to be doing for the next two and a half months and met the people I would be working with.

The brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease are characterized by the presence of Amyloid B plaques and tangles of Tau protein that spread from entorhinal cortex through the hippocampus and to connected areas of the cerebral cortex. The Tau proteins can be transmitted between neurons either through neurotransmitters or through exosomes. Because the cell strictly regulates the neurotransmitters, our lab will be focusing on the exosomes and trying to prevent their spread through the brain. If we can contain the Tau protein, the portions of the brain involving the memory loss typical of Alzheimer's patients could be diminished.

I will be helping Ms. Turk and Ms. Krate carry out the experiment designed by Dr. Huentelman that will attempt to find genetic and chemical inhibitors of exosome production. First, we will take six different kinds of cells (Cath.a, Neuro-2a, PC-12, SH-SY5Y, H4, and HELA) and grow them in a cell culture until they are at 90% confluency (a measure of cell density on the bottom of the dish) at which point we will split them, one to return to the freezer, one to use as a sample. We will then force the exosomes to package a protein called PLAP to use as a marker. After 48 hours, we will centrifuge the samples and collect the supernatant containing the exosomes. Then we will lyse the cells, color the PLAP proteins and keep two of the cell lines based on exosome count. The two chosen cells will then be run through a drug screen and a gene screen to determine which chemicals and genes control exosome production.

I don't have a very regular schedule, so updates will be very uneven. Bye!

 P.S. What is the protocol for signing off of a blog post? Every time I do it, it seems very awkward.