Tissue Cultures

Over Thanksgiving Break, I determined four hormones I want to further research before testing them on the HeLa cells. All four hormones increase dramatically during pregnancy. The goal of researching female sex hormones is to find a correlation between abnormal hormone changes and cancer. Today, I worked on my website and started my poster, which is due on December 6th. My goal for the rest of class is to further research the four hormones related to pregnancy and see where else they increase or decrease throughout life.

For the past couple of weeks, I have been reading the article The Effects of Sex Hormones on the Growth of HeLa Tumor Nodules in Male and Female Mice (C. R. Franks, et al., 1974). This article contains a documented interaction with HeLa and exogenous sex hormones. After not receiving an email from The Henrietta Lacks Initiative, I decided to email The Henrietta Lacks Foundation to see if I could get a response. After creating my first poster, I feel I have a better understanding of the experiment I am going to conduct. I want to continue doing research on HeLa cells and their connection to sex hormones and add some of the information I put on my poster to my webpage.

Unfortunately, right now, we are unable to work with HeLa Cells in our lab at school. This means we need to find a new cell culture to experiment on. Mouse cells are used in science because of their genetic and systemic similarities to humans. As of right now, I want to use Murine Vaginal Epithelial Cells. These cells are a part of the lower female reproductive tract (LFRT) and have hormone-signaling proteins (ESR1) that regulate estrogen and controls cellular differentiation for vaginal cells. As for next steps, I am going to work on my proposal for the WISRD board and use the proposal to figure out all the details of my experiment.

I have finished my project proposal, and I am definitely more confident in this experiment's logistics. The only things I want to confirm with Megan. The two main questions are the medium and the hormones. The medium just depends on whether the tissue culture comes with a medium already. My hormone question requires a conversation with Megan.

Here is an update on what I have been up to these past couple months. I was able to get my project approved by the board and have created a short list of the materials I need. We received an assay machine along with supplies to practice the protocol.

As of right now, I have just read the protocol and done research on how each step in the process affect one another. I have designed a laser-cut version of a model of the ELISA flow. For my poster this semester, I am going to be working with Ivy and Parker to create a poster all about quantitative biological data analysis.

So, last week was poster night, and I think it went really well. Over the weekend, I researched plant tissue culture for epithelial cells. I found some key facts, and then, in A Block, I found a kit we could use. We would use African-violet tissue, which is very common. I am also going to try out for the WISRD board PR position, so today I am going to create my portfolio.