Sam Scheibler: Ophthalmology, Week Two

My second week here at UCSD has been great. I have learned more about maintaining cells through cell cultures – growing cells under controlled conditions in the lab – and using them to conduct research.

Think of each individual cell as a person. They are incredibly fragile and need to be handled properly. Stress and other factors can seriously affect cell growth and development, hence compromising results. In order to ensure good cell growth, the cells rest in an incubator that maintains temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide levels. Since these conditions are also ideal for bacterial and fungicidal growth, the equipment used to treat and maintain cells must be completely sterile. Ethanol and UV light is used to sterilize the workplace. The cells are suspended in a medium, which must be changed on the regular as  debris and dead cells can stress neighboring cells. In addition, the medium contains nutrients and an acid-base indicator, with which one can monitor carbon dioxide levels. The more carbon dioxide, the more acidic the solution.

I will using a pituitary cell line (meanig that all cells have an identical genotype) to do my research. As of right now, the cells are still too few in number, hence I need to cultivate more before I can start doing experiments. This shouldn’t take long, as the number of disfigured cells has steadily decreased, meaning that the number of cells that are or had experienced significant stress is low. Similarly to how a human would react to jumping into an incredibly cold pool, cells respond too. During the freezing and thawing process (cells are stored at -156 C), cells can experience shock from the change in temperature, which can disfigure them. In my culture, changing the medium regularly has, or should have gotten rid of most of the disfigured cells as they usually do not adhere to the bottom of the petri dish very well. The rest of these cells should die off soon. I hope to begin testing within a couple of days time.