Biochemical Society Studentship 2017

Laboratory Work Experiment 1: Caspofungin Growth Curve The caspofungin plate spotting assay we set up last week did not show any differences between wild-type and apm4 Δ  mutant strains in their ability to grow in the presence of various concentrations of caspofungin. Wild-type and apm4Δ Strains Appear to Grow Similarly  in the Presence of Caspofungin. Wild-type (1st and 3rd rows) and apm4Δ mutant (2nd and 4th rows) strains were grown at 37˚C on a YPD plate supplemented with 0.16 µg/mL caspofungin. Because of this, we decided to do a literature search to find other caspofungin sensitivity assays in order to double check our results. With help from Harriet, I adapted an experiment which measured the OD 600  of cells growing in YPD media supplemented with various concentrations of caspofungin. As it would not be accurate to measure the OD of hyphal cells as an indication of total population size, we could only do this experiment with yeast. In additio...

BMS Away Day Firth Court Entrance At the beginning of the week I attended the Biomedical Science (BMS) research away day, which was held in Firth Hall. The day consisted of numerous talks and poster presentations given by various members of the four research areas which exist within the BMS department at the University of Sheffield. Namely, cell biology and cancer, developmental biology and disease, neuroscience, and stem cell and regenerative medicine. The day was really interesting as it allowed me to explore the work that is going on within the department; in addition to giving me an indication as to how to approach poster and flash talk presentations when I (hopefully) become a PhD student.   Laboratory Work Experiment 1: Microscopy This week I had my first go at microscopy; using standard transmitted light before moving on to stain some samples and use fluorescence. However, I wasn't able to gain any results from these latter experiments as our cells were co...

Arrival View of Firth Court from the Laboratory Everyone that I have come into contact with so far has been incredibly friendly and welcoming, which has helped me settle into the laboratory in a relatively short space of time. My supervisor for this project is a fantastic second year PhD student named Harriet, who has involved me with experimental planning as well as helping me with practical laboratory work. On the first day, I attended a seminar given by  Dr. Evan Reid   on the role of spastin in membrane trafficking; and how this may contribute to hereditary spastic paraplegias (HSPs). This is an area of research that I have barely touched upon during my undergraduate study; which meant the talk itself was very informative as well as interesting.  Laboratory Work Experiment 1: Cell Wall Stress Plates This involved preparing YPD (the media used to support Candida growth) plates which contained various chemical compounds that exerted stress onto partic...