Success & Challenges

In the beginning, I struggled with the plating techniques, and sometimes, the results did not come as expected, but with practice, my results got better. I was able to improve on my sterilization and plating techniques which ultimately improved my experiment results. The sterile pipetting techniques I have learned in this lab have helped me in my lab classes for genetics and cell biology. Now, I am able to use all of the equipment properly. 

When counting the cells to record my data for the presentation, I got the expected results, and the other interns and the lab technician could replicate them. I learned that through practice, I had improved my plating skills, as shown by my improvement in the results as the internship went on. 

The difficult part was being consistent with the experiments, every week a new experiment was done, so I had to adapt to the cell line and understand its growth patterns. We started out with a completely different cancer cell line before we switched to the U87 cancer cell lines, so I had to learn the growth patterns for the glioblastoma cells and had to adjust my plating accordily so they grew more spread out on the plates so the cells are easier to count.