A Butterfly and Biotechnology

Whenever I'm made to realise that I'm not clear enough or good at something, I try to make myself clear with it. It happened today, during my laboratory examination, I was asked to perform monocyte isolation from a given blood sample, but, unfortunately, I was not very clear with the principle behind it.(but, still I managed to complete the experiment as I know the protocol, but, knowing the principle behind each step of the protocol clearly is very important, isn't it?). But, nothing is wrong in it, I made myself clear with it now. That's good, right? So, let me share with you some basic principle and protocol for isolating monocyte from blood sample. For isolating monocytes, initially we must isolate PBMC (Peripheral bood mono nuclear cells) from the blood sample. Here, let us make few terminologies clear before starting with the principle. Peripheral blood sample  - It is the blood sample obtained from acral areas of body (in general, it is the blood collected ...

Though there are several protein assays available, the most preferred one in many laboratories is "Lowry assay". It is effective in the concentration range of 0.01 mg/ml to 1 mg/ml. And, as an additional info, the paper published describing the procedure and principle of Lowry Assay is the most cited paper in the scientific history. (Feeling like, "Wow! I want to publish one to compete with Oliver.H. Lowry"???  :P) Why Lowry?   Though there are several other protein assays, mostly Lowry assay is used in many laboratories. The reasons for preferring Lowry are: sensitivity of the assay, highly reproducible, cost effective, easy to perform. Biuret assay is generally used for higher protein concentrations like tissue samples but, Lowry for less concentrated samples and hence used in most of the molecular biology laboratories where there will be need for assaying comparatively less concentrated protein samples (in most cases where we attempt to produce enzymes). Oth...

It's been a long time, since I wrote a post here. Finally, final year of my course and so very busy :) with books! And now, got time to share with you. As you know already (don't know?, then get to know :P ), I use to have favorite subjects in each semester, third semester it was microbiology, then in fourth semester, it was cell biology, fifth was molecular biology, sixth was genetic engineering and now i'm in seventh semester, but, you know what, I don't have a favorite subject!!! Don't worry that I lost interest, instead, I got 3 favorite subjects - Immunology, Animal biotechnology and Plant Biotechnology! It's awesome this time to have more than one favorite subject and here I'm gonna tell you something about, cre-lox system which is most widely used for making modifications (mostly deletions). These modifications can be done at a specific tissue alone by using a tissue specific promoter i.e., you can selectively knock out a particular gene in partic...

Let it be any disease, ranging from a fever (which is the symptom of many diseases) to HIV, diagnosis at an early stage is very important for giving specific treatment.Whenever I go to a doctor, he asks me things like, stomach pain, fever, body pain, head ache, running nose, throat pain etc., then, he checks pulse, then he uses his stethoscope, he then gives all the possible antibiotics! Yes, really, this happens in most cases. Then, if my problem is not fixing up in a week, he'll ask me to take a blood test, this, that, and, all! Nothing wrong in this, because he can't ask everyone coming to him to take blood test at the very first sitting, then, no one will visit him back saying he sucks out blood all the time! But, it is okay to have a blood test after a week, but, not after a month! Diagnosing a disease after it had reached a severe stage is comparatively less significant than diagnosing at an early stage. So, how to diagnose? Antigen - Antibody! Antigen and Antibody ...

Hi, dear readers, friends, it's been a long time, I wrote here. Sorry for that, was a bit busy in lab! And, you can be happy because of the fact that I was busy, as I got lots of experience to share with you! Let us first start with SDS PAGE! SDS PAGE - Sodium Dodecyl sulphate - Poly Acrylamide Gel Electrophoresis! This SDS PAGE is done for separating proteins based on their molecular weight. It is a widely used technique and it is very useful for having an idea about the expression of your protein of interest. Principle: The name SDS PAGE comes from the fact that this method uses SDS for making your protein uniformly negatively charged and of course, the gel is prepared using poly acrylamide. Why to make the protein negatively charged? Because, here our interest is to separate proteins based only on their molecular weight, but not based on charge and all proteins are not negatively charged like DNA (which is separated based on size using Agarose Gel electrophoresis ). SDS is ...

Oral cancer refers to cancer in any part of your mouth like tongue, lips, palate etc., Cancer may be due to various reasons like irritation due to continuous alcohol consumption, smoking, poor oral hygiene etc., And it can also happen due to Human Papilloma Virus (HPV). Human Papilloma Virus is a type of non enveloped virus (Papilloma) that can infect humans. They are classified generally as "High Risk" and "Low Risk" types. The high risk type HPV 16 is found to cause oro-pharyngeal cancer. Diagnosis: Generally biopsy is done where a small part of your tumor is removed and observed under microscope. The biopsy can be just cutting a small portion or it can also be done using brush for collecting the cells. After confirming the abnormality using this microscopic observation, further analysis is done for finding out the type of HPV which caused the oral cancer or to find whether the cancer is just because of alcohol/smoking. This further analysis can be d...

It was 24th December I believe! I just saw the details of the Indian Academy of Fellowship only a week before the last date. I decided to apply for it and just applied in a hurry actually, yes, it was really a hurry! I was done with everything and sent the application. I was waiting for the release of selected list of candidates from the first of March. They updated the selection list everyday but my name was not on the list till 25th of March! I used to go to the IAS website everyday and check the list, but, my name was not there in the selected list of candidates. I lost all my hope and decided that I won't get selected. But, it happened! I received a mail from the Academy after 25th of March! I was happy to the core, jumping up and down. Because, I was never out of my town from my child hood all alone. And, this fellowship was something really precious for me! I believed that this would change my destiny to a better place! I was happy till my father said "no" to th...