It has been 3 years since i fought with the morning traffic at 7am on weekdays. It sure wasnt easy to get back on the momentum and it has been one long tiring week.

I stepped behing the doors of laboratory 4 earlier this week. More specifically, the lab is reffered to as Cell Molecular Research (CMR). As the name suggests, the focus deals with cancer on a molecular and cellular level. In a nutshell the lab is working on a gene and its proteins that are noted to exist in significant amounts in cancer cells. The big question is, what is the mechanism behind it? So as i progressed along, i was given stacks of articles to help me better understand the this gene under the research. The articles were all very dense and it was as though it was french. Now imagine my major project.

I started off making my personal buffers, solutions, reagents from scratch. Unlike those prepred by the TSO, i was given the option of altering certain 'raw materials' to help improve the experiment. During the week, i witnessed several techniques such as transfection. I had the opportunity to carry out western blot which would have been difficult back at school because of its time consuming process. The machinery used in the lab was also slightly different. Such as the spectrophoto meter, where the machine computerizes the brad ford assay curve, compared to the usual where we had manually draw the curve out to determine the concentration of the sample.

There were also some familar procedures, such as cell culture, subculturing, thawing of the cells from liquid nitrogen and freezing of the cells. What makes it different this time is I got to manually handle the experiments. Of course, my mentor came in to help from time to time, after all MCT practicals passed almost a year ago. Despite the vigirous hands on practicals I had in school, somehow I feel inadequate in Lab4.

Of all that is done and revised this week, it was to help prepare me when i conduct my experiment for my MP. I was breifly introduced to my project regarding deteacting levels of a particular protien, and if its production would lead to tumorgenesis. This research that I am handling, is to revelance to the research that the lab is conducting too. The idea of the project is still really fresh in my head and I get confused time to time with the principles and the aims, and how to go about doing the experiment. Fortunately I do have a very patient mentor to help me along the way.

That is about all for this week. Next week i will begin on my major project, start to conduct my experiemtns from scratch and hopefully to be able to provide a clearer picture on my research.

GLAD