April 19, 2014
Our second meeting was also a success!
1) Alexi and I (joined by Shannon and Riley) jumped right in to a mouse dissection lab to explore components of the mammalian body: basic anatomy and immune organs.
2) Alexi skillfully dissected out the spleen from her mouse and we began a lab experiment to identify different types of cells that reside in this immune organ.
First we, made a single cell suspension of the spleen by squishing it up and filtering it so that all the cells are floating around next to one another and no longer part of an organized spleen organ. Next, we lysed the red blood cells to get rid of them because we are only interested in which blood cells (the immune cells!). We did this by submerging them in a hypotonic solution. This causes fluid to rush into the red blood cells and pops them open and kills them. Once the red blood cells were killed, we spun the remaining spleen cells at high speed in a centrifuge so that they were all pulled into a tightly packed pellet. This pellet of cells was then 'stained' with fluorescent reagents that can very specifically identify different types of cells. We stained B cells red and T cells blue. Finally, we ran our colored sample through a fancy machine called a flow cytometer so that we could visualize these red- and blue-colored cell types on a computer screen using the special software for this machine. Lexi succesfully completed her first real scientific research experiment!!
At our next meeting, we hope to more specifically explore how vaccines effect the mammalian immune system.
