The first week and we’ve given up beef

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

With two full weeks of the project completed, this blog is an excellent platform to reflect and expand on what we have achieved and what has been learnt.

The events of the past weeks have left us driven and more excited than ever, but have firmly grounded us in realising the amount of work and planning our ambitions require.

Week 1

Our project took off to an expected but slow start. We had compiled an extensive list of paraphernalia we required prior to the start of our placement, a lot of the early days were spent waiting for fundamental equipment to arrive to allow us to proceed.

This waiting time was not wasted. Elastin is one of the proteins we require for our detector; this is quite costly to buy in small amounts. To economise we decided to extract the protein ourselves. In order to do this we purchased bovine meat off-cuts from a local butcher and proceeded to follow extraction methods  we had pieced together from a variety of research papers.

Our first experience of independent laboratory work thus involved shaving the skin off a dead cow.

This experience was blessed by a surprising amount of enterprise from the members of team CHaD. Henry decided the BIC razor was the most sensible approach. We soon learnt it was not. Instead the use of forceps and a cheese grater yielded more impressive results.

Next we washed this skin in saline solution to remove any soluble protein, and measured the absorbance of the resulting solution in a spectrophotometer. When satisfied with an adequate absorbance drop at 280nm we de-fatted the tissue by soaking it in a solution of chloroform. Finally the tissue was put through successive rounds of autoclaving to remove any remaining non-structural proteins, we used the spectrophotometer to judge when this had been achieved.

What we were left with was relatively pure, elastin-rich skin samples that we could then dye and  integrate into our detector.

Constructing the wax traps

As equipment arrived we were then able to start designing the wax traps needed to attract and trap the parasite, required in both experiment protocols.

In order to do this we drew upon a wealth of research and reading, particularly the work done by a Sudanese team in 2003. We concluded that the core traps made with a ratio of 3:1 Sesame Oil: Wax  should induce strong chemotaxis in the cercariae. To this core we experimented in adding powdered arginine and sodium phosphate, whilst ensuring the trap maintained its integrity in solution and could be stored for long periods of time. By the end of the week we had a range of traps made up of varying ingredients in different ratios. We planned to expose these traps to cercariae in week 2 to see which designs were most effective.

The Natural History Museum

One of the most exciting updates we received during this week was the opportunity to work in the parasitology labs at the Wolfson Biomedical building in the Natural History Museum.

For this we must thank the brilliant staff at Wolfson as well as the fantastic SCI. http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/schisto

These are the labs in which we are currently based in (15/07/2015).

In these labs we are able to directly handle infected snails (of the Biomphalaria genus) and so have use of the cercarial schistosomes the snails shed; this is an extraordinarily exciting enhancement to our project efforts.

 

Questions/Inquiries?: ek2614@ic.ac.uk