THEY'RE ALIVE!

I'll separate my personal stuff from my research stuff now:
Research: I have renamed Rachael (my advisor) because she really doesn't like being called Ratmaster because she resents that she has to kill the rats. So I have changed her name to Splinter, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles master who is a rat. But I think this is better, cause she is sagely like Splinter. She likes this one, I think. She likes Kyles name, Captain Bucket Leg. They have yet to really except the idea that I remember everything, so it was shocking to them that I was telling them about things they had already forgotten about. So that was cleared up.

Splinter did another dissection on Tuesday, getting us a new batch of cells for Experiment #2. And on Wednesday they were still alive and doing well in most cases. We have four different samples.

1. PEG (-) Control
2. Fibrin(+) Control (5F,1T)
3. CoPolymer (5F,1T)
4. PorousPolymer

Cells were surviving well in all but the Porous Polymer, which we are really pondering about, because we got some serious pockets in them. I haven't been all that accepting of the Porous Polymer idea, and I let Splinter in on that on Wednesday. I have serious doubts that the polymer will last long enough to be useful in vivo, because as I see it we are just allowing the polymer to hydrolize from the outside-in and outside-out at the same time, which decreases the halflife significantly. I also think, and Splinter agrees, that the process of extracting the Fibrin polymer from the CoPolymer could be detrimental to the cells. We decided Wednesday that we would do an experiment to check out what these pockets we saw in our day 1 sample of Porous Polymer actually consisted of.

What we saw was big pockets that had all our cells in them. We don't know if the cells were in pockets of PEG or nonPEG, and it makes a HUGE difference. And we need to figure out how these pockets are made, because by our thinking they shouldn't happen. My thinking is that when we are collegenating the fibrin out (our way of making it porous), we are taking out the support structure of the PEG gel, making it collapse in on itself. Who knows... we are gunna look at that.

My current quest is to figure out why our methacrylated PEG is different every time we make it. My thinking is that if we do the same thing every time we should get the same result, or atleast very similar results, but we don't. So I have been thinking about possibilities, but its difficult since I don't do this process, its done for me, so I have to read through our lab protocols and look for research on the internet for anything relating to the methacrylating. The last batch that I used was paculier in that it turned our PEG polymerization solution BLUE! Which is concerning, it was actually funny cause we had BLUE PEG and PINK Fibrin, so I told Rachael that I would take the boys and she could have the girls. Here are some pictures of our Day 1 Results: First is the Fibrin Control, Next is the Co-Polymer, and last is our perplexing Porous Polymer.


Personal:
Well we survived another week in the physics library. It was eventful in that people have started banding together again. One interesting part is that one of the new physics chicks has already identified that I "easily offend people." Which didn't bother me too much because I have been pretty ubrupt with her cause she annoys me, but when she said it she knew my name, and I never told her what my name was. I suppose other people don't get the idea behind my calling people Mr. and Ms. instead of using their first name, unless I consider them on a first name basis with me. Oh, and she doesn't like being called a chick. THAT is annoying, I decided that I'd just not talk to or about people that don't like what I call them. With the obvious exception of Splinter.