The project is back on track! We received new stocks of 293T on Friday, and HeLa on Tuesday. And I split my batch of 293T on Monday. Damn, it feels good to be back in the lab and get some real work done. And I mean handling something live, not just making solutions.
Not that making solutions is boring. We messed up the proportions of one of the buffers we were making last week, and ended up making 50% more buffer than we intended to. It was a nail-biting affair all right, trying to judge how much water we could add to get the ingredients to dissolve without the beaker flowing over!
So far, both cell lines seem to be healthy. The HeLa cells, especially, seem a whole lot healthier than the ones we got the last two times. My guide thinks it might be because the last two lots spent 16 odd hours in transit, and HeLa doesn’t like long train journeys. The new lot was in transit for 4 hours. I guess it makes sense. You do feel more out of sorts after a 16 hour journey than a 4 hour one.
It’s kinda exciting to think that I will work with the world’s oldest cancer cell line in about a week’s time from now. HeLa was first isolated in 1951, from a cervical tumour in a woman named Henrietta Lacks (hence HeLa). She died soon after, because the cancer had already metastasized by then. But a little bit of her lives in labs all over.
HeLa is very different from most other human cells. It has a chromosome number of 82, as against the normal human number of 46. This is partly because it has genes from the Human papilloma Virus (HPV), the virus that caused Henrietta's cancer. In fact it’s even been characterized as a different species, called Helacyton gartleri, after Stanley Gartler who discovered some of the many ways in which HeLa differs from human cells.
HeLa is so commonly used the world over it’s estimated that the total number of HeLa cells alive outnumber all the cells that were in Henrietta’s body. And soon enough I’ll be one of the thousands who’ve used this cell line. It feels good, it really does.
6 comments:
how exciting! keep us all updated on this, will ya?
and btw, some of my classmates do not know what a HeLa cell line is. this is when i feel a little better about moi level of knowledge :D
@Pseudo: I'm sure none of my classmates know about Hela cell line.. and now I do! :-) * Draws herself up proudly*
I'm glad you find this interesting, and I definitely will keep you updated. Feel free to ask me any questions you might have. I know I'm glossing over a lot of things, and that there's a lot that I don't know (Rumsfeld's known unknowns :D)
For the record, most of my classmates don't know about HeLa either. But that's what science is about isn't it? Putting up stuff you know so that whoever comes across it will want to go find out something new as well.
so technically... is Henrietta (may god bless her soul) alive or dead??
or did I answer that just now?
Henrietta is dead. Period. there's no way you can consider HeLa cells to be a part of her. Sure, you can say they came from her body, but they aren't even human! 82 chromosomes!
Post a Comment