Cell Culture

What a difference it makes when our students become more confident working in our Cell & Tissue Culture lab! But none of this is possible without the work from every member of our team, including our peer mentor. From the faculty that developed (and teach) the biotechnology core courses, to our lab aide (also a graduate from our program), our program is small for now but keep graduating a steady number of Biotechnology Laboratory Technicians.

In the picture, some of our students in this... Read more

Speaker : Bruce Van Dyke, Quincy College, MA

Host : Dr. Sandra Porter, Digital World Biology, InnovATE BIO .org

1. Watch Webinar1: Virtual Single-use Biomanufacturing

2. Visit the Virtual Single-Use Biomanufacturing on-line module password : qcbtc

3. Go to the bottom of the page to download the handouts

A QUICK TOUR

I think cell culture can be one of the most exacting skill sets in biotechnology. I have done it, and sometimes it went well, and sometimes it did not!

Millipore Sigma has posted some terrific (and free!) videos that cover many important topics about cell culture. Some of the videos are very short and cover just one specific point such as how to cryopreserve your cells. Others are webinars that are about an hour long and cover a number of topics including the incredibly important topic of cell line verification.

I particularly liked the... Read more

Hello, my name is Kristine and I'm currently enrolled in State College of Florida's Biotechnology program. I have always been in love with science and remember watching documentaries and television shows wanting to work in the labs that the actors/featured scientist were in. I thought in order to get to work in such a place you needed to go to Harvard or some high class university first.

When I started my journey back to school I was working as a certified nursing assistant (CNA), and majoring in nursing. CNA's are the low man on the health care... Read more

This week, Jenn tells us about her pet viruses, dissects a publication, tells us what not to do with SDS-PAGE gels, and shares a bit of job-hunting advice. Enjoy!

I'm beginning to wonder if I have some scar tissue on the part of my brain that helps me know my own strength. I may or may not have broken three (OMG 3) pieces of short glass while attempting to run SDS-PAGE protein gels (ahem) in the last week. I swear I'm not a brute! I never broke any short glass at PCC . However, I can... Read more

I love imaging. Especially imaging using antibodies.

I spent a large amount of time recently creating images of differentiated human iPS cells... and I loved it.

A couple of weeks ago, I was giving a plate of undifferentiated stem cells to practice passaging and removing unwanted differentiation. I noticed that there was a very cool-looking neural field developing on the plate, and decided that instead of removing the developing neurons, I would allow them to continue to grow for a couple of days and then do some imaging of them. I have grown to love the microscope over... Read more

Is it science or art? Jennifer tells us about make tubes with lovely colors, better known as Bradford and ss-galactosidase assays, and graphs with Excel. Guest speakers tell the PCC classes about technology transfer at OHSU and cell culture at Najit Technologies.

This week (and a half) in Portland Community College's Bioscience Technology Program we continued work with assays, and had guest speakers in Current Topics and Cell Culture.

Last week in Lab Tech we worked on the Bradford Assay which measures the amount of protein present in a sample. (Somehow I managed to... Read more

This week in Basic Lab we continued working with micropipettors and today we had our first lab exam and practical. The practical was actually really fun! There are quite a few tubes that our instructor will have to verify the measurements on though, so it's not likely that we will get our results until next week. Overall, I believe I did well.

Also this week several students from our program volunteered for the Oregon Bioscience Association' s "Oregon Bio 2012!" and attended the poster show. The people at OBA clearly worked hard ensuring the conference... Read more