I will be doing IHC on a regular brain, a mild Alzheimer's brain, an Alzheimer's brain, and a severe Alzheimer's brain. I will be looking for the neurofibrillary tangles (tau protein) and the amyloid plaques (amyloid protein) and hopefully I will see an increasing amount as I go from least severe to most severe Alzheimer's cases.
I plan to also do western blots which will be the second part of my experiment. IHC shows where the protein that I'm looking for is and if there is any, while western blots show how much of the protein is present in the sample.
So this week was pretty uneventful. I didn't do that much because I usually shadow someone doing an experiment and help out, but we were waiting on some tissue samples so we only ran a couple experiments.
my project title may also be changing, oh how similar are we
ReplyDeleteResearch goals change often so no worries! I think you will be able to collect meaningful data and hopefully show an increasing trend in tau protein with increasing Alzheimer's severity. Looking forward to seeing the data.
ReplyDeleteHi Kinza! Did you expect your project to change so drastically going in? Do you believe that the fact the project is changing in itself has been a learning experience for you? (In terms of having to adapt and figure out future goals quickly)
ReplyDeleteI definitely did not think it would change so drastically. It absolutely has been a good learning experience for me because now I know what to expect for future research projects. It has helped me socially also- usually I'm kind of shy but this experience made me collaborate with my lab partners and mentor to figure out a new experiment.
DeleteHey Kinza! Can you explain your goals, and what other things your SRP is trying to accomplish, or what other things your research is trying to attain? Besides the cure for Alzheimers, because that is too broad a goal.
ReplyDeleteThey're just doing general research on Alzheimer's (I know it's really broad). They have a bunch of tissue from patients with various diseases and they do various tests on it. Sorry it still sounds so vague. Basically, the boss tells the lab what he wants (so for example this week, some of us were running tests on ALS tissue this week) and then they gather the results and publish. It's also very hard to explain more specifically because not everyone is working on the same project. Also, a few weeks in a month, a company representative comes in to test various drugs they are making for Alzheimer's.
DeleteI haven't worked out all the details for my project yet but I am trying to compare the amounts and locations or two proteins, amyloid and tau, in regular brain tissue, mild, moderate, and severe Alzheimer's tissue. I expect there to be an increase in the tangles (caused by tau) and plaques (caused by amyloid) as I go from regular to severe.