Summer of stem cell research
"It looks like every cell in your body has died."
Tears were stopping me just because I was shocked. My cells had shut down. With only one month left of my internship, I was back to square one after being accepted into the highly competitive Stanford Institutes of Medicine Summer Research Program (SIMr) and working with human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) for the previous month. How could I make up for the time I had lost? During those 170 hours, I had worked tirelessly to cultivate stem cells that, beneath the microscope, appeared to be lifeless and lifeless.
When I first started my internship, the high-tech hoods, automatic pipettes, and high-speed centrifuges were a bit intimidating. Although it took me a while to become used to the equipment and begin my search for information about PrDM1, a gene thought to be involved in controlling replication in hESCs, by the first of the 170 hours. To begin, I had to create a growing media for the hESCs first. To the ten millionth of a liter, I meticulously measured and tested the correctness of each measurement before dispensing it into the medium solution. Finally, I got to see how my new medium worked for my hESCs after I put them in.
Fortunately, two days after moving into my new home, my cells were prospering and even outgrowing the space. Because of their proclivity for rapid replication, it was only reasonable that they would be subjected to frequent transport. The tricky element was that I couldn't combine different hESC strains (some of which served as "control" strains) as part of my experiment to discover the function of PrDM1. Concentration and coordination are required for the transfer of hESCs. When I did it for the first time, it took me approximately three hours total. Transferring my cells became second nature after a month, and they were thriving well—I had introduced a fluorescent protein into their DNA to check that the hESCs with the resistant vector were alive, as expected. There were hundreds of hESC colonies of different strains that I had successfully established. As far as I could tell, everything looked to be going just fine...
Reminiscing was out of the question at this point in time. I woke up from my trance and refocused my attention on the problem.
“Ariela? Make sure to remember that you probably didn't do anything wrong when you first hear the news. If you've ever worked with stem cells, you know how delicate they can be."
"I know," I answered, "I'm ready to try again," and this time I was sincere in my smile.
Even though I didn't finish my project before the end of the summer, I was able to reproduce portions of it and get useful data in the process. No matter how badly things went, I am proud of myself for not giving up. "Our greatest weakness is giving up," stated Thomas Edison. "The only surefire way to succeed is to try again."
