For the first time ever in lab, this past week we had some healthy organotypic hippocampal brain slice cultures thanks to our wonderfully efficient new lab technician. Normally I work with acute brain slices of the hippocampus which have to be prepared on each day I perform experiments. With these organotypic beauties, our lab technician can prepare a set of slices and pop them in an incubator. The slices will live for three weeks, giving me flexibility to run experiments on the same day that I need to get other work done, like attending a lecture on a different campus, playing with, ahem, aligning my lasers or (when I'm lucky enough to have some) analyzing data. Today I "patched" my very first pyramidal cells in an organotypic slice culture. (To "patch" a cell is to attack it with a tiny glass electrode filled with fluorescent solution and an electrode which lets me record the cell's activity. You can see my patching pipette coming into the cell from the right in the above image.) Isn't this cell just stunning?
No comments:
Post a Comment