Introduction: Optimizing Antibody Concentrations for Immunohistochemistry in TBI Research
Shriya S -
Hello! My name is Shriya Singh, and I am a senior at BASIS Phoenix. This year, I am embarking on a research project in a field that interests me a lot–neuroscience. The brain has intrigued me for a long time, whether I was aware of it or not. Psychology has deepened this interest. But, I didn’t want to just stop there; I wanted to continue exploring the “why” and “how” behind our actions, emotions, and pathologies. This eventually led to the place where chemistry and psychology collide–neuroscience.
This curiosity, a chance to get lab experience, and an opportunity to facilitate traumatic brain injury research are what led to my research project, entitled “Optimizing Antibody Concentrations for Immunohistochemistry in Traumatic Brain Injury Research.” For some context, immunohistochemistry (IHC) is a laboratory technique that involves proteins (antibodies) binding on to markers (antigens) on a cell; a visualization agent (e.g., fluorescent dye) is attached to these antibodies to see the location, abundance, and shapes of different types of cells in tissue samples. See the photo to better understand what happens in IHC.
Because there is a specific, complicated protocol for conducting IHC, it can be easy to mess up, leading to blurry, unusable IHC tissue samples. This protocol includes antibody concentrations. My research focuses on finding the right concentrations that result in optimally visualized (the most clear, crisp, and usable) tissue samples.
IHC is heavily used in traumatic brain injury (TBI), a result of a substantial force impacting the brain and causing neurological damage, research. Usually, researchers use animal models, the brains of which have been subject to TBI. One of their main focuses is neuroinflammation, one of the most researched cells being glial cells (immune cells of the brain).
Because researchers want to ensure their IHC tissue samples will be crisp and clear, they need to know what antibody concentrations to use to get the most clear results. Since most of these concentrations cannot be found online, they try to find them by testing on non-experimental animal tissue, wasting animal tissue and antibodies. Hence, my research hopes to facilitate TBI research and reduce animal use in research.
I’ll be doing my research at the neurotrauma lab in the University of Arizona college of medicine, while shadowing a PhD student, Madeline Pressman, who also happens to be my mentor. I’m excited to get more lab experience whilst learning about the vast chemical reactions that occur inside the brain!