Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Today I went to school for the routine fish maintenance, and when I got into the lab,
DESMOND'S TANK WAS EMPTY.
D:
As for why Desmond was named Desmond, my answer is; Joee.
That would answer everything.
Noooo.
I don't even know when and what he died of.
There isn't a body, so all I have left of him now are fond memories of him being a voracious devourer of leftovers and a few crappily taken pictures.
D':
If only I had known he will leave this world so soon!!
There will be a funeral for him on Friday when Joee comes to school.
Bawwll.

Labels: desmond, FAREWELL, fyp

Monday, September 15, 2008

Now I'd try not to space my blog posts months apart.
Operative word being 'try'.
:D

Ah yes today.
Results came out!
I'm going to post them so that you all would be awed by my prowess!
tracking projectiles all over being thrown
Nah, not really.

Medical biochemistry : A+
Molecular biology : AD
Instrumentation and analytical chemistry : AD ( O.O SHOCKING.)
World issues, s'pore's perspective : B
Home electricity : B  ( lolol)
GPA : 3.83

While I was waiting for Yvonne to come to school, I met the bitches, who sadly ain't working on the sourdough bread project anymore. (Damn, I had wanted to mock them when they made inpalatable bread)
They, as usual, did stupid things.
Like making a pyramid of sweets.


What a bloody waste.
My brain cells were depleting at an alarmingly fast rate in their company, but thank goodness Yvonne arrived and we flew to the lab to check the hybridomas.

 
Well, it was pretty good in the sense that there wasn't TOTAL DESECRATION in all the wells, as I'd feared. Just 2 obvious ones.
The most highly confluent ( out of all we had, but still far from 100% confluency) well had shitloads of cells.
But, something like this went on:

Yvonne : YAY Minny there are lots of cells here you come see! 
Me : Woah looking goo-, wait -pregnant pause-, .....I see lots of small round things in the background. ......They're moving! Vibrating! All over!
Yvonne: D:
Me: -looks at whole well- Lots and lots and lots of round things, but not moving in all areas.

Those numerous mobile small spherical objects in the background, it's usually a sign of E.coli contamination.
But we decided to change the media 1st and observe for a few days instead of discarding the well, since the growth medium was not turbid and yellow (yet).
The other wells still aren't growing properly though. Sadface.
Subcultured the 3 most confluent cells into 96-well plates, since Dr Chai said that they reach confluency faster and better in smaller wells.
AH hope it works and the cells manage to reach 80-100% confluency!
Or we would probably have to restart the mouse immunization and creation of a new batch of hybridomas.
=(

Labels: bitches, fyp, results

Friday, September 12, 2008

Now this is what is known as a hiatus.

Alas, here is a highly abridged version of what has been happening.
Also, long ass post right here. This is a result of accumulation, I suppose.

Firstly, my Final Year Project has started, I don't know if it's considered officially started, but basically my partner Yvonne and I are going back to school everyday to maintain our sea basses and check up on the hybridomas.

That's us. We, together with Joee, are collectively known as The Bastards.
We beat the bitches into submissal. Life is good :D

More on FYP later. It has not been a smooth start.


Heidi and Ninny came back during the, well, pretty distant past for their breaks.
Caught with them, had much laughs and reminiscing.
( Oh God, KV era is like so long ago! Poly Yr1 days, gone with the wind!)
They have since left the country again, which fills me with much woe!
But it's good that they're doing what they love, and I'm going to wish them all the best!
Caught up with the remaining KVs a couple of times, PL musical, movie dates etcetc.
Somehow all these outings give me a pang of sadness.
I guess it's a reminder of how time past, cannot return? Sigh.

School last semester was, pretty laidback, in hindsight.
I expanded my web of acquaintances ( haha, Year 2s! Interesting people they were), and choked/laughed spectacularly at/given up hope on the bitches.
Exam results are being released in 3 days!
But I'm more worried over the hybridomas then grades. Seriously.


Okay, now with more details on my faggotFYP. Rant time.
Basically, we're supposed to develop an antibody test-kit for Vibrio anguillarum which infects many kinds of fishes, including sea basses. This test-kit is needed because of the commercial importance of sea bass, and a quick and simple way of detecting the disease saves alot of revenue, since in early stages vibriosis is highly treatable.
Aside from the test-kit creation, we have to maintain 4 large and 4 small seabasses.
Feed, wash tank, decontaminate once a week, aquarium shizzle. Monotonous menial labour, but it's not that bad and easy.


That would be 2 of the large seabasses. I'm sure they'd taste delishus. They also eat, fight and poop alot.

This badass motherfucker ain't part of our project, but it was so thug I had to post it. Seriously. This snakehead is hardcore.


As for the test-kit;
The actual method is really long and full of science jargon, so I'm not going to elaborate.
Well, the project is basically in the last phase, since we have inherited the hybridomas* from the previous group.
[* Hybridomas are lab-made cells formed by fusion of a normal antibody-producing cell and a cancerous cell. (in this case, mouse spleen and myeloma)
They proliferate "immortally" (without the cell division limitations of normal cells) and produce a continuous supply of monoclonal antibodies for culture, etc. Fuck yeah antibodies!]
What's left is maintainence/propagation, purification, cross-reacitivity checks and bulk production of those antibodies. Sounds easy, huh.
It isn't that daunting actually, once the hybridomas take off steadily.
The shit-hitting-fan thing is that our inherited hybridomas are dying well by well, by contamination. And all we're doing right now is changing the media, in the meanwhile waiting for confluency (100% growth in entire well) and then subsequently subculture.
In addition, they are proliferating Very Badly. Note caps.
(Also no proliferation = no confluency. So we haven't done actual subculturing yet.)
Even worse, today in the lab, when I was adjusting the microscope to check stage of growth, the plates suddenly toppled and overturned though I didn't hit them or anything, and I was quite sure they were stacked properly. There was also spillage.
A large part of me died inside.
Mysterious Fucking Poltergeist Activity.
Well probably not, but I don't know why that happened!
Yvonne and I shitted bricks, and decided to immediately transfer them to new plates, to salvage whatever could be.
Those of you not familiar with cell-culture, the reason why so many bricks were shat, was because, aseptic technique is so important (bold does not even begin to cover how) in cell-culture, and that contamination is literally everywhere. One little, insignificant, overlooked misstep could introduce bacteria, fungi or mycoplasma into your culture, and that would fuck your shit up.
To make matters worse, hybridomas by nature, are extremely fragile cells, highly prone to contamination, especially in the initial stages of growth.
So plate toppling and overturning, that's equivalent to a bloody bioterrorism nuke.
Moreover, I don't know how much of cells actually were transferred, or if they can survive in such low numbers.
Going back on Monday to check. Hybridomas > results.
But I have a really ominous gut feeling, that contamination is IMMINENT.
This is why, both of us are significantly more worried about our wells, then exam results.
Not something you hear often.

With hearts in great unrest, we accounted our tragedies to our supervisors.
The discussion was generally distressing and the outcome pretty much that we are fucked, if the hybridomas don't survive.
That would mean we would have to create hybridomas from scratch again, and the process is a long and ardous one.
=(


I'm....reasonably depressed right now. And it's 1am.
I best be hitting the sack, till next time, ciao.

Labels: fyp, hi again, update, WOE