We interviewed Professor Michael Ferenczi on Fundamental research and Nanotechnology. Watch the video below:
My final day in the lab has now come and gone. University has started again and my time in the lab already feels like such a long time ago.
I have really enjoyed myself over the past 8 weeks. Learning many new techniques that will hold me in great stead for the coming year. I now [...]
It has come to that stage in my 8 week project with one week left to go. Its all go and I am now starting to have enough data to perform some significant statistical analysis. It’s incredibly exciting as I can now finally see wether the work I have been doing has been fruitful or [...]
Today started like any other day in the lab. I started at 9 am walked past a colleagues desk said hi and went about my business for the day. I prepared fibres and got them ready for force measurement. I was lining the fibre up underneath the light microscope mounted between two hooks (one of [...]
No this isn’t a macho statement in fact its very scientific statement. As part of the fibre contraction process you have to make sure that the sarcomere length is approximately 2.4 micrometer long. This is because you get the maximal functional overlap between the myosin heads of the thick filament and the actin filament of [...]
The time has come now where I have been taught everything I need to get started fully with my project. So today I began by mounting some fibres on T-clips and set about readying myself to contract them on my stage.
This sounded relatively straight forward, unfortunately it wasn’t as easy as it had previously seemed. [...]
Today I had the pleasure of learning the ropes for freezing fibres! This doesnt maybe sound like the most exciting thing…unless you get to do it with liquid nitrogen! All of this said the freezing process used liquid nitrogen to cool Isopentane to liquid nitrogen temperatures to freeze fibres in. So I wasn’t just adhoc [...]
Over the last week I have been keeping myself very busy with learning how to manipulate the single fibres under the microscope to mount them to test their force of contraction. I thaw the frozen fibres and move them into a dish containing relaxing solution. This allows me to manipulate the bundle of fibres and [...]
The first few days of my summer studentship in the lab have been occupied with learning the ropes of working in a Research environment. My supervisor has been teaching me how to make the different solutions I will need for my project. As my work involves freezing skeletal muscle fibres in Trehalose solution, and then [...]
My end of year exams are over summer has begun and I have had a couple of weeks of vacation. The batteries are re-charged and I’m looking forward to starting work. I’ve done a couple of days in the lab in the last few weeks to acquaint myself with a few of the basic techniques [...]
