Ventricular Myocardial Band! Dr. Takashi Matsui surprised us with such a revelation after lunch during the scientist talk session. We were all wondering why it wasn't discovered earlier. :-) You can find his paper at the following link.
http://icvts.ctsnetjournals.org/cgi/content/short/9/6/951
We also learned to stain heart tissue with hematoxylin and eosin. Then we permanantly mounted them using Permount. We also used inverted microscope to observe the mounted slides.
We are so sorry to learn that Jen was leaving us. Jen we will miss you so much!
6 comments:
Yes, Jen is fantastic. The staining and permanent cardiac slide process seemed fairly straight forward. I would have liked to see the method from start to finish. Meaning take the heart, slice it etc. I showed the heart cells to students this week. They were amazed to see the nuclei in each cell. The slide helped them understand more that we are made up of trillions of cells. I also have a slide of the mouse eye cells Jen kindly let me have.
Dr. Takashi Matsui surprised me, because I'm still trying to figure out what he was talking about. Break it down for me Amy :^)
Reading about protein purification. I wasn't sure what was meant by, "purification." After reading the article MIT Biological Engineering Department
20.109 - Laboratory Fundamentals in Biological Engineering, Spring 2006 found at http://ocw.mit.edu/NR/rdonlyres/Biological-Engineering/20-109Spring-2006/B5106408-11C3-4E11-A1CE-6228E06A7C66/0/mod2_intro11.pdf, I think I get it.
Amy, is this right - proteins can be quarternary structures. We may want to study just one particular protein in the structure and therefore need to separate it or "purify" it from the other proteins in the quarterary structure. One way we can do this is by "gel filtration." This process separates larger proteins from smaller ones. When I read this I remembered an experiment I did last year on the NOAA research trip. We did a 70 foot deep plankton tow at night and then filtered our catch using an assortment of sizes of microfilters. We could determine which plankton or zooplankton ate who based on who filtered through which size filters. Anyway, I'm thinking this filtration system for proteins does a similar thing. The smaller the filters, the smaller the proteins...I'm looking forward to learning more about protein purification. :^). P.S. I emailed Dr. Borthikur this evening about attending the biotech class at UH this summer.
I was so fascinated by the concept of the ventricular muscular band, which to my amazement, was proposed in 2001! WOW! Why have I not heard of this before??? Very, very interesting! It made me start to think of different animals lower on the evolutionary tree with fewer-chambered hearts... do their hearts have this same spiral? If not, when did this start to happen?
Dr. Matsui's research supports this VMB concept, and considers implications for treatment of myocardial infarction, at least in mice! :-)
When school was back in session this past Monday, I was so excited with the VMB heart structure that I explained it to my students. They weren't as obviously excited as I was, but I'm glad I shared it with them anyway. I have the sneaking suspicion they will learn much more about it in their upcoming educational years.
I really enjoyed going through the procedure to stain the heart cells, and then using the inverted microscope to examine them, and also other mouse cells, e.g. the retina cells. I was also amazed by the fact that Dr. Matsui himself worked with us on the microscope, and explained the slides he used in his research.
It is a bummer to lose Jenn, but the silver lining will be that we get to meet and work with more people.
Can't wait for the next session!
I am planning to try out Gram staining this year (or next year depending on how much time we have after the seniors leave) then permanently mount them. I really enjoy all the lab activities.
I just reread what I wrote on 4/30 and realized I wrote the wrong thing! I was totally amazed (and continue to be) by the concept of the VMB, or Ventricular Myocardial Band. I wrote "muscular" in my earlier post.
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