Alzheimer’s is a progressive disease that causes dementia and destroys other important behavioral functions. There is no cure for Alzheimer’s yet and many of the details, such as the cause of the disease, are uncertain. However, research shows that neurofibrillary tangles, caused by hyperphosphorylation of the tau protein, and amyloid plaques, caused by beta amyloid accumulation, are key causes of neuronal death. In my project, I will be looking at the concentration of tangles and plaques in the frontal cortex and the hippocampus.
I will be keeping my title (Tangles and Plaques in Alzheimer's).
I won't be doing western blots anymore. Instead, I will be doing another type of immunohistochemistry (Fluorescent IHC).
Kinza,
ReplyDeleteFluorescent IHC will give you some very impressive visual results so I am looking forward to seeing them! Can you provide some additional details regarding the technique? Have you worked with immunohistochemistry already or will this be something new you will be learning?
The techniques for chromogenic (the one I've been practicing for a while) and fluorescent are very similar. Some of the main differences are that the primary antibody needs to be a lot more diluted and I can stain two at the same time. There are a couple of other small differences too because of the materials available (ex: fluorescent microscope instead of light microscope, and donkey serum because that's the only one we have for fluorescent) and because we won't be using DAB which was what we used for staining in the chromogenic IHC.
ReplyDeleteI have worked with IHC already. Up until now I was helping out with other people's IHCs but this week I did my own experiment (which I will talk about in my new post).