This week's mostly been about statistical analysis, which was great at first until we realized that we didn't have enough rat subjects for our data to be statistically significant, which means...more scoring!!(yay) I'm not complaining, but I really would have loved to see some solid results. No one else was as disappointed, so I guess this pace at the lab is the norm. This means, however, that I probably won't be able to be there when the statistics actually end up being significant enough to establish a conclusion. Other than that, I found a really great Thai restaurant just around the corner of where I've been living, but I'm leaving on Wednesday, so I think I'm just gonna pig out every day until I actually have to leave :(
As mentioned in my previous blog, I have been awaiting ligament, menisci, and cartilage tissue from a canine or human knee joint for (interleukin) IL-1B tissue culture. IL-1B is an inflammatory cytokine that has been proven to increase rates of tissue degeneration and osteoarthritis development in the Thompson Lab. Dr. Stoker wants me to experiment with different types of knee tissues in a co-culture with varying levels of this cytokine to determine its effects on the entire knee joint. This co-culture uses an insert permeable to the media to separate the two tissue samples from physical contact, while allowing them to share the same media. This creates an extremely accurate model for knee tissues in their native environment due to their exposure to the same synovial fluid in the joint. This model would then be treated with the IL-1B and cultured for 21 days. During these 21 days, the media would be collected every three days for biomarker evaluation at the end of the stu...
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