Week 1 in the Lab
My summer project primarily centers around the effect of the media on the peptide hydrogels to be used for encapsulating MSCs that for a future in vivo study. To start, we were busy making a 21-amino acid peptide using the FMOC method during the first week. The entire process can take several days. The process has alot of steps that are repeated. Viri (grad student) would do one step so I could see how to do the step and then she guided me on my physically duplicating her step. The FMOC process involved a resin (looks like beads/see picture) that holds the growing peptide. To generalize, the technique required protection and deprotection of the amine in each amino acid while its incorporated into the growing peptide. The efficiency of each step was monitored by taking a “nano-sized sample” and adding ninhydrin. After heating, test samples were generally either blue or brown indicating deprotection or protection had occurred. All the colors were appropriate so the peptide should be in its correct sequence. The crude/impure peptide should be finished with dialysis on Monday. We will use the mass spec next week to determine if the peptide is correct.We have to prepare more peptides for before in vitro testing of the peptides in hydrogel. Viri is also growing and staining MSC cells for encapsulation. 
Hey Jodie!
Wow, this sounds amazing! There’s a lot of vocabulary that I tried to look up, but still am unsure on what it means. Why are peptide hydrogels important for MSC encapsulation for an in vivo study? Could you please explain this further? It sounds really interesting!
I look forward to seeing the development of your research!
Hi- I will cover the background about peptide hydrogel and attempt to answer your questions at our weekly meeting. Basically, the hydrogels can be surgically placed in an animal model and the hydrogels help to retain the cells at that location.
Hey Jodie, this sounds very intriguing and fascinating. What is the FMOC method and does this help to sequence the amino acids? I would love to see the making of a protein. Also, in vivo? What is the organism and what is it that is being observed in vivo? I would love to hear more. Wow! 🙂
Ditto. What is FMOC?
Hi Jodi,
Looks great like you have been very active. When are you looking to have your experiment done by?
Cheers,
Robert
Just finished the planning: We adjusted the number of peptide hydrogels for synthesis to 3 instead of 6 peptides and now incubation time points to max 12 days due to the July 4th Holiday. So… Plans are to complete experiments by July 3rd and data analysis & most of the poster prep by July 15th.