Friday, September 12, 2008

Now this is what is known as a hiatus.

Alas, here is a highly abridged version of what has been happening.
Also, long ass post right here. This is a result of accumulation, I suppose.

Firstly, my Final Year Project has started, I don't know if it's considered officially started, but basically my partner Yvonne and I are going back to school everyday to maintain our sea basses and check up on the hybridomas.

That's us. We, together with Joee, are collectively known as The Bastards.
We beat the bitches into submissal. Life is good :D

More on FYP later. It has not been a smooth start.


Heidi and Ninny came back during the, well, pretty distant past for their breaks.
Caught with them, had much laughs and reminiscing.
( Oh God, KV era is like so long ago! Poly Yr1 days, gone with the wind!)
They have since left the country again, which fills me with much woe!
But it's good that they're doing what they love, and I'm going to wish them all the best!
Caught up with the remaining KVs a couple of times, PL musical, movie dates etcetc.
Somehow all these outings give me a pang of sadness.
I guess it's a reminder of how time past, cannot return? Sigh.

School last semester was, pretty laidback, in hindsight.
I expanded my web of acquaintances ( haha, Year 2s! Interesting people they were), and choked/laughed spectacularly at/given up hope on the bitches.
Exam results are being released in 3 days!
But I'm more worried over the hybridomas then grades. Seriously.


Okay, now with more details on my faggotFYP. Rant time.
Basically, we're supposed to develop an antibody test-kit for Vibrio anguillarum which infects many kinds of fishes, including sea basses. This test-kit is needed because of the commercial importance of sea bass, and a quick and simple way of detecting the disease saves alot of revenue, since in early stages vibriosis is highly treatable.
Aside from the test-kit creation, we have to maintain 4 large and 4 small seabasses.
Feed, wash tank, decontaminate once a week, aquarium shizzle. Monotonous menial labour, but it's not that bad and easy.


That would be 2 of the large seabasses. I'm sure they'd taste delishus. They also eat, fight and poop alot.

This badass motherfucker ain't part of our project, but it was so thug I had to post it. Seriously. This snakehead is hardcore.


As for the test-kit;
The actual method is really long and full of science jargon, so I'm not going to elaborate.
Well, the project is basically in the last phase, since we have inherited the hybridomas* from the previous group.
[* Hybridomas are lab-made cells formed by fusion of a normal antibody-producing cell and a cancerous cell. (in this case, mouse spleen and myeloma)
They proliferate "immortally" (without the cell division limitations of normal cells) and produce a continuous supply of monoclonal antibodies for culture, etc. Fuck yeah antibodies!]
What's left is maintainence/propagation, purification, cross-reacitivity checks and bulk production of those antibodies. Sounds easy, huh.
It isn't that daunting actually, once the hybridomas take off steadily.
The shit-hitting-fan thing is that our inherited hybridomas are dying well by well, by contamination. And all we're doing right now is changing the media, in the meanwhile waiting for confluency (100% growth in entire well) and then subsequently subculture.
In addition, they are proliferating Very Badly. Note caps.
(Also no proliferation = no confluency. So we haven't done actual subculturing yet.)
Even worse, today in the lab, when I was adjusting the microscope to check stage of growth, the plates suddenly toppled and overturned though I didn't hit them or anything, and I was quite sure they were stacked properly. There was also spillage.
A large part of me died inside.
Mysterious Fucking Poltergeist Activity.
Well probably not, but I don't know why that happened!
Yvonne and I shitted bricks, and decided to immediately transfer them to new plates, to salvage whatever could be.
Those of you not familiar with cell-culture, the reason why so many bricks were shat, was because, aseptic technique is so important (bold does not even begin to cover how) in cell-culture, and that contamination is literally everywhere. One little, insignificant, overlooked misstep could introduce bacteria, fungi or mycoplasma into your culture, and that would fuck your shit up.
To make matters worse, hybridomas by nature, are extremely fragile cells, highly prone to contamination, especially in the initial stages of growth.
So plate toppling and overturning, that's equivalent to a bloody bioterrorism nuke.
Moreover, I don't know how much of cells actually were transferred, or if they can survive in such low numbers.
Going back on Monday to check. Hybridomas > results.
But I have a really ominous gut feeling, that contamination is IMMINENT.
This is why, both of us are significantly more worried about our wells, then exam results.
Not something you hear often.

With hearts in great unrest, we accounted our tragedies to our supervisors.
The discussion was generally distressing and the outcome pretty much that we are fucked, if the hybridomas don't survive.
That would mean we would have to create hybridomas from scratch again, and the process is a long and ardous one.
=(


I'm....reasonably depressed right now. And it's 1am.
I best be hitting the sack, till next time, ciao.

Labels: fyp, hi again, update, WOE