Protein and drugs

Hey Hey,

TFIFFFF! I kinda feel bad for saying that considering I just had almost 1 week off from our two snowstorms. But hey, it's the weekend!

This morning I woke up cold, tired, and staaaarving. To fix this I made PB and Banana Protein oats:

1/3 oats, 1 mashed nanner, 1 tsp Better N' PB, 1/2 scoop vanilla whey protein, raisins, stevia, and pinch sea salt

So. good. Seriously protein oats are (imo) one of the best 'power breakfasts'. Healthy carbs and fat, protein, and pure deliciousness. I'm not the greatest raisin fan, but in oatmeal they're outta this world. Also pretty freakin good in breakfast cookies.

After a skipped morning workout (due to a bellyache, boo), I managed to make it to lab despite falling asleep on the metro and almost missing my stop. Don't think I haven't done that before. Twice.

Today's experiment went much better than yesterday's. I am currently making antibodies to use as drugs for the treatment of leukemia. Antibodies are proteins (made of amino acids). Protein engineering can be very difficult at times, and this was the case for one I've been working on. Today however, I managed to generate enough material to do several exciting experiments in the next couple of weeks. Perdy stoked ova here ;-)

SciFact: To visually determine how much antibody I've made (and its quality), we input the protein into a porous material (called a gel), and apply a chemical that makes the protein negatively charged. When voltage is applied, the protein (now charged), travels through the gel according to its size. The larger the protein, the slower it moves.

Migrating proteins


Next I apply a dye that only stains protein (not DNA, RNA, etc.):

In the leftmost side of the gel, there is a line or "band", called the "protein standard". This contains a mixture of protein sizes. The next 3 bands are my antibodies. Because each size of the protein standard is known, I can determine the size of my antibody (and quantity by the band intensity).

Neat???


Anywhoooo that's enough science class for today, ha. After the exciting results from that experiment came in, I headed off to lunch in the cafeteria (I usually bring my lunch to save moola). I had a glorious salad:

Romaine, spring mix, tuna, egg whites, chic peas, cherry tomatoes, peppers, red onion, beets, grapes, cranberries, sunflower seeds, balsamic, and EVOO.

Not too shabby for a cafeteria salad, eh?

After lunch I was craving a tea and dessert. I usually don't eat stuff like this because I try to follow a 'clean' diet but these had my name all over them:

 Keebler FudgeShopps Grasshopper 100 calorie mint cookies. They taste JUST like Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies! And amazingly good paired with hot tea. Mmmmmm.

Well I'm off to a lecture then happy hour to bid farewell to another grad student in my lab that's returning to Germany. We'll miss you Dennis!

Have a great night!!!!

Lauren

(Experiment performed at National Institutes of Health)