Week 8: The end is near…
Shriya S -
Hello everyone, welcome back to my blog! As the presentations approach and the weeks soar by, I want to give you some updates on my progress, along with more images and facts.
Updates
I’ve finished coding my IHC scoring game! You can find it using this link. Let me know what you think of it and don’t hesitate to drop your score in the chat!
I’ve also finished writing the first draft of the last few sections of my paper. I just need to refine it now. Sometimes, as I write my first draft, ideas materialize in my head and being clashing around, and before you know it, I have an incredibly complex sentence with befuddling syntax and absurd word choices, reflective of the chaos in my brain. So, this editing and revising process is really important for me, especially here where the goal is to be as clear and concise as possible. Something I’ve found what really helps is reading the words clearly out loud (or in my head). And, for this topic, with potentially confusing scientific topics, getting the opinion of those unacquainted with it is really helpful to determine if my writing is clear.
And lastly…the presentation. It is coming along fairly well. However, this is definitely what I have the most anxiety towards. Part of the reason has to do with making my work accessible enough. I don’t want to do all this just to not have anyone be able to understand it. But, if I define everything carefully, the presentation will become tediously long. Finding the balance between sharing enough formation so the audience gets the just of my work and but not so much where it becomes monotonous and invasive of others’ times is the tricky part. On a happier note, I’ve found images can make my work so much more accessible! The anxiety related to public speaking is always present though. But hey, at least it’s pushing me to practice more.
More images 🙂
I’d never leave you guys hanging dry with the images. They just make everything more fun!
The first image is an image of MAP2 from the somatosensory barrel cortex (S1BF) region of the rat brain in the left hemisphere. MAP2 is one of the few antigens that we are targeting through immunohistochemistry (IHC) that is found on neurons, instead of glial cells (non-neuronal cells in the central nervous system). It particularly is found on dendrites (hence, the streaks of staining) and the perikarya (cell bodies; soma) of neurons.
The second image is a more macroscopic image of the same MAP2 tissue sample. Traditionally, a slide had 3 brain “slices” instead of 2, as shown here. But, it it takes a really long time to download an image of that size, so I only have 2 here (this is a screenshot of the image because it would not let me add the original image). But, this is a good example of how the tissue integrity of our samples can sometimes degrade. If you look at the bottom “slice,” there is some folding on its the upper left corner, which is not ideal for uniform staining. Sometimes the tissue also tears/fragments or has dark spots on it, neither of which are great for uniform staining. This one mainly has tissue folding problems.
The third image is another macroscopic image. This is a CD83 stained sample. I added this one to show how tissue can sometimes fragment. Like the other one, this also has small dark regions around the edge, but this isn’t too big of a concern since the edge isn’t really examined by TBI researchers. The main focus is usually the S1BF region because that is where pathology is present. Some studies also focus on the hippocampus and and larger regions of the brain.
The last image is one I compiled with other images for my paper to justify the uniform staining scores for each sample. The arrows point to irregularities in tissue integrity. Apologies if the image is a little blurry. These tissue samples are all stained for CD83. You can find the exact primary and secondary antibody concentrations in its caption.
That’s it for now. Do let me know if you want to see more images though! I’ve only posted IBA1, MAP2, and CD83 right now, but I also have MBP, GFAP, and AQP4. I think the coolest ones were definitely MAP2. The streaks of staining were unique compared to the other antigens, which were usually a series of dots/ellipses.
As always, thank you to those supporting me in this journey–Ms. Pressman, Dr. Goodwin, and BASIS Phoenix! And, of course, I appreciate you reading this post!
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