psgurel: I always save my favorite experiments for Fridays!  Today, I’m doing an assay to look at kinetics.  ATP (Adenosine triphosphate) is typically known as the main “energy” source in cells and is required for several reactions to take place.  On a chemical level in these reactions, ATP gets hydrolyzed and you are left with ADP (Adenosine diphosphate) and phosphate as a product.  Today, I’m looking at how fast different proteins hydrolyze ATP.  To do this, I stop reactions at various time points, and then I add a green dye that labels free phosphate.  The dye turns darker shades of green as the amount of phosphate in solution increases.  Check out my samples!  The darker the green, the more phosphate is present, which means more ATP has been hydrolyzed!

crestwind24: Today I am scoring and imaging the neurons of old worms. This means sitting for a few hours in a dark room at a big microscope and computer. Specifically, I am trying to see what is happening with certain neurons in the worm as they grow old. We know very little about how neurons change in old age, and why some die in normal aging, as well as in many diseases. In the first picture you can see the green light under the microscope, which is activating my fluorescent proteins. On the computer screen you can see the image the microscope is taking. The arrows point to the 2 worms I was taking picture of, old worm selfie!! The selfies are a bit grainy since the room is dark… sorry … and its time to upgrade my phone.

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