GAMES 2008

Bright and early, ALL the girls arrived to my lab here in DCL (usually we only have half at a time) to perform the experiment for the final project. They had to dissolve various densities and shapes of jello and compare solvents to simulate the testing of a new vaccine delivery system. We did muscle repair "testing" (pics below) and Marina discussed the chemistry/make-up of those four sided nail smoother-buffer sponges that you can find in nail salons. The girls who missed the scaffold making tour yesterday were able to see it today.

In the afternoon, the girls learned the economic side of engineering, spending time analysing costs for capital, research, etc. for engineering products. I couldn't explain this well at all, so I will leave it for the ladies to explain to their families. I hear that most found it a valuable experience.

Right now, Katie is cutting cubes of jell-o for our vaccine delivery system project for tomorrow, Sarah is figuring out how to burn 36 cds for the girls and Jenna is breathless from getting stir bars from the MCB core curriculum area before the 5pm closing. We will all be going in a bit to have a group photo taken fairly soon, after the arrival of 12 more stir plates. Always such a production!!

We had a little snag today. The ladies were supposed to start with a tour of a lab that produces scaffolds. There was a slight miscommunication of days with our generous hosts so the morning girls missed this opportunity. However, it looks like we can get these girls to see it tomorrow instead. Whew. We also need to perform the "muscle breaking" activity that we didn't have time for today. This goes over well, so it should be no problem to fit it in.

In addition to listening to Sarah's talks about biomechanics and joint replacements (she is doing a co-op with Zimmer in Indiana) and dissecting chicken legs, the girls were able to view their GFP transfected cells! Of course, it worked like a dream. Katie spent a lot of time answering questions the girls had about that and other things about cell culture. I am glad to see that they were assimilating the information from the past few days and deciding what was unclear to them and clarifying it. Some also took pictures of themselves near the biosafety cabinets. And, like tourist destinations, they are unlikely to see one of those for quite some time, so this is quite appropriate.

Finally, a picture of indispensible Sarah! Behind her is my fully assembled skeleton, who needed the hip stem implant (made out of aluminum foil) because the ball of one femur was MIA.

Well, allow me to complain in my generally sweet manner. My back really hurts. I don't know what I did (and my scientific mind won't rest until I figure out how to prevent this in the future!!) I'm afraid this is all my assistants will remember about me Luckily, I know all of them from other experiences, so I doubt that would be true. I did get to the point where I would sit on my perch and direct them as if I had dominion over them all (hardly, but I played make-believe for a brief time!) I am touched tremendously by their generosity and willingness to do all that needed to get done on behalf of making this camp very special for the girls!

Today, we added a plasmid for GFP, green fluorescent protein, to epithelial cells in culture. GFP is so useful because it is expressed in living cells, unlike the glowing molecule we added to stain for actin in the fixed cells on Monday. We used FuGene and a GFP tubulin plasmid to make this happen. Browse through the lecture on Transfection if you would like to know more. Naturally, send me a note if you have questions. I'd be happy to talk you through it!

The other fun activity the girls did was to make a model of skeletal muscle with spaghetti, straws, kool-aid, nerds, plastic wrap and wax paper. The different plastic represents different layers of connective tissue and the spaghetti with sharpie stripes represents the regular arrangement of actin and myosin. Engineers find solutions to problems. Time efficiency translates to cost efficiency. One young lady independently found a solution to the tricky problem of accurately drawing these marks on spaghetti--the pieces, being cylindrical, tend to roll around. She laid them all out, taped the bottoms together and then was able to use a ruler to make the appropriate markings. 20 points for you for your ingenuity! Look....

Kristen, an Espresso Royale barista and future AmeriCorp volunteer, very spunkily teaches the ladies about skeletal muscle formation in culture and about the sliding filament theory of muscle contraction. Again, backward cell phone pictures are probably the doing of the mischevious person who put "Science Goddess" as the display on the front of my cell phone!

Jess, our resident former varsity gymnast, spunky in her own right, taught the ladies about transfection! For all you know, Jess, talented beyond belief, also spoke backwards!

Jess does the same thing as Katie, only in mirror image. Jess is my hula hooping pal. We've been hooping out on the Beckman quad nearly every day! Unfortunately, hula hooping is now on hold while my back is frozen. I miss it!

I'm certain you don't make cherry jell-o like this at home! Kristen's help was tremendous. This will be used on Friday. Tomorrow, hopefully our cells will be glowing. The girls will tour a facility to learn how scaffolds are made and they will investigate the biomechanics of muscle, tendon and bone by dissecting chicken legs and thighs from the grocery store. Last year, this was quite a hit.

I will keep this brief because today was long! These lucky girls were able to work in the biosafety cabinets in order to make media to grow their cells and then to take a flask of cells, lift the cells from the surface and move half of them into a new flask with fresh media.

It is sometimes hard to gauge if they really appreciate the opportunity here. I did overhear that some of the girls thought what they did was pretty cool, and I definitely believe it is.

Just a note to thank Katie for her presentation on use of the equipment and training the girls in the culture room. I also want to thank Kate for her presentation about tissue engineering! You guys did a great job. Jenna, Jess, Sarah and Kristen were also invaluable helpers in the culture room while I talked about histology with the other half of the class.

Jenna, who helped me with this camp last year, and who has long arms like me--very useful for cleaning the hood-- demonstrates how to properly clean the biosafety cabinet!

Kate, grad student and new mom of a 6 week old son, tells the girls about replacing pancreatic islet cells to ameliorate type I diabetes. We don't present backward powerpoints, my cell phone camera takes pictures backwards.

These well plates contain the cells that the girls will transfect with a GFP-tubulin plasmid tomorrow. Red glowing cells on Monday, green glowing cells on Thursday. Pink media every day!

Last night, Marina and I gave our introductory talks. First, I gave the "Safety in a Bioengineering Lab" talk featuring my now famous "safety models" followed by "What is Bioengineering?", which is always a challenge because it is such a big field, hard to define...but I gave it a go again! Then Marina gave her talk about Chemical Engineering which is very, very interesting to me, just because these chemical engineers are ubiquitous and insidious almost--they're everywhere--they make EVERYTHING! Then Marina gave her safety lecture, which is slightly different...a good complement to mine, so it works!

Today, we jumped right into things, teaching the girls to stain the actin in fibroblast cells I had grown on glass coverslips. They did a fantastic job! They learned how to use a micropipettor just fine, understood that rhodamine phalloidin is quite toxic (it comes from the death cap mushroom) and they should not touch it at all (or as Jenna said--don't lick the coverslip or anything!). These girls are serious about safety! They also understood the concept of photobleaching--the exhaustion of a fluorescent molecule when exposed to light, so they kept their sample well covered. The results were fantastic! I'm never disappointed in this lab exercise. Everyone loves a glowing cell! If you want to know more, refer yourself to the appropriate powerpoint slide above or send me a note. I'd be happy to discuss it with you.

Some of the girls, watching their campmates present their "actin" models. The mark of a female scientist is the ponytail (or sloppy bun). If their hair is not in a ponytail, then they are wearing the holder on their wrist as a fashion statement--serious about getting to work at any second! I almost always have a holder on my wrist, too!

Getting ready for tomorrow. These are their flasks of cells ready to be placed in the incubator. Amazingly, we let 14 year olds manipulate Biosafety level 1 (the safest level) mammalian cells in top notch biosafety cabinets! What a treat. I know you would all love to give it a try too!

I need to thank my wonderful coordinator, Sarah, for making things happen so amazingly smoothly! Camp would not run so well without her, for sure! And, I am so happy with all of the lab assistants but today I would like to give a special kudos to Katie and Jenna for their enthusiastic and informative talks to the girls today. Very nice job!!!