Lab Placements

First of all, I would like to highlight that I will not be posting any blogs until the 11th of January, as it’s holidays and I have to finish my assignment. I am pretty sure that I will not have anything interesting to write, but if something changes I will post.

So today, I thought I will tell you how my placements went.

I haven’t done all of them but its better than nothing. I have finished a 3 day placement in Christoph Ballestrem lab and have started one in Judith Hoyland’s lab. The fist one is in the same group as the nerve project that I am interested in, while the latter one I pickled only because I am interested in the techniques. Don’t take it the wrong way I like the project and people are nice there, however the labs look so depressing, they don’t even have a single window in there. I might be wrong and I do understand that you shouldn’t pick a project based on the lab quality but I think I will go mad if I spend 3 years there.

On the contrary Ballestrem’s labs are really nice and the placement was really great. They have a really good team and they allowed me and my classmates to do some experiments. More precisely we have made fibronectin covered stamps nano-hooks and nano-stripes onto which we later seeded cells. On the last day we have done immunocytochemistry to see how cells have spread. Well, at the end it didn’t work as we could see the expected cell spreading, there were a few areas which looked like there might be a pattern but that’s pretty much it.

The second placement that I am doing is in Hoyland’s lab, this is the one that I officially have to do. So far I have been with them 3 times however, each time I came for less than an 1 hour, so I am a bit concerned how it will all add up to a minimal of 3 days. Anyway in this placement they have showed me how to do stain for calcium deposits and a real time PCR including preparation of the samples.

After the Christmas break I will do a placement in micro computer tomography and I am very excited about it, I really hope I will enjoy it so I can take this project.

So far that’s it, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.