Inductions and beginning to grow tissue

29/09/2009

Today I had the building induction in the Biomedical Research Centre (BMRC) with Alba Warn. Alba took me through all health and safety procedures and took me around the lab showing me where each research group works, the communal areas, waste disposal, first aid kits and fire exits. Main points to note were:

Chief Technicians - Alba Warn & Jasmine Waters
Emergency Evacuation Procedures - Follow signs to Fire Exits
Alert others by striking 'break glass' boxes to set alarm
Assembly points: Across DMU loading bay for East Wing, and grass between BMRC and Sainsbury Centre for West Wing.
First aid information is on posters at each end of the lab
Labcoats to be worn at all times, along with gloves, goggles, face visor as appropriate (e.g. wear face visor and protective gloves when handling liquid nitrogen).

01/10/2009

Today was my induction to the tissue culture lab, again with Alba Warn. I was shown where all equipment for the Edwards lab and all communal equipment is held. Important points to note:
- Hoods need to be cleaned before and after each use with trigene
- Anything brought into the hood must be disinfected with trigene before it is brought in.
- Lab coats must be worn at all times in the tissue culture lab. This lab coat is kept in the lab.
- Hoods should be booked before hand, and as a matter of courtesy if you finish early, or think you will finish late you should let the next person know.

02/10/2009

I began to grow my cells with Alba. I began by creating my medium by adding L glutamine and foetal calf serum (FCS) to the medium provided. Then added this to cells from passage 23 and 32 which had been stored in liquid nitrogen. These cells were then transferred into small flasks and incubated at 37 degrees celcius.

I also attended the Edwards research group lab meeting and met the other members of the research group.

05/10/2009

Cells were passaged from P23 to P24 and P32 to P33. This was done by first aspirating the medium from the flask, washing with PBS buffer, aspirating again, then washing with TE to remove the cells from the matrix. The cells were transferred to larger flasks along with 10ml of the medium created previously. The cells were incubated again.

07/10/2009

The cells have been growing well but were not yet confluent so today I added fresh medium to feed the cells. I have incubated the cells again and will check on them again tomorrow and decide whether they need to be fed again or to be passaged again.