Kabir Grewal, Week 6.5, UPitt Lab

This past week was my last in the lab.  In the middle of last week, I continued to work on immunofluorescent staining.  This took a couple days to finish because the antibodies need to be left on the staining slide overnight.  I added 2 more antibodies: DAPI which stains for nuclei, and another general stem cell marker called ­­­­CD271.  When I originally observed the stem cells under the confocal microscope, I did not see what I was expecting to; instead, I saw blurry colors that were not vibrant at all.  This made me quite nervous because this is essentially what I had been working towards for the better part of six and a half weeks.  After looking at the stained cells under a regular microscope, we discovered that in each of the 8 slides, the cells had grown primarily around the outside of the slides and sparsely in the middle region.  With this new knowledge, plus the help of Dr. Du, we were able to take some great pictures, some of which are shown below.  As I stated earlier, this was the main data I have been hoping to acquire since the beginning of my time in the lab, so it was very exciting and fulfilling to finally be able to obtain it.  However, the data from my experiment alone is not enough to be able to develop a strong conclusion to support or reject the over-arching hypothesis of the experiment, so I will need to wait for some of the other lab mates to complete further experiments before I will know this.

Cell staining pictures obtained using confocal microscopy

In addition to completing my experiment, I was given the amazing opportunity to present my work to my entire lab.  I did this is the form of a power point presentation which lasted 10 minutes.  I must say, I was considerably nervous before I gave the talk, as everyone in my lab has his/her Ph.D., M.D, or both. I found that once I started to talk, I became increasingly comfortable and found that I know the material pretty well.  Following the presentation, Dr. Du surprised me by taking me out to lunch to celebrate a successful run at my experiment, as well as the end of my time at the lab. 

It still really has not sunk in that I am already finished with my time in the Du lab at the University of Pittsburgh. I feel as though I just started to get in the swing of things and became close with everyone in the lab.  I cannot thank the Du lab enough for helping me each day with my experiments, and teaching me a great deal of information in such a short period. I will miss everyone greatly, and look forward to keeping in touch will all of them.   


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