My Cake

I remember the day my boss told me about an assay when I first started at UCLA 7 years ago.  I told myself, "what did i get myself into?"  I scared myself to death because of the horror stories I heard from people who tried to do it and were unsuccessful.   To make the long story short.  I worked on this study for probably on and off since I started 7 years ago and finally last year my boss finally said to me, "remember that assay we talked about, you have to do it, our "piece de resistance" in this paper.


Let me say this, timing is everything.  In due time, this assay was developed and became commercially available.  My boss found this kit to do this ChIP assay that i was so scared to do.  I didn't have to go through the grueling process and disappointments.  Suffice to say, I did the experiments and we found that protein-dna interaction in the nucleus of the cells we were looking for, and voilà, got good results with the first try.  A very good icing on the cake I should say.  Patience is virtue indeed.  Waiting it out to do this assay saved me a lot of anguish.  
Luck is on our side.  Science didn't like it, however, PNAS will be publishing it!   Loving what you do makes it more fun.


Data and paper, the two incredible ingredients that can put a smile on my face any day. That's my kind of cake! 

Something Blue

SPG stain on Spleen

I'm learning this new technique where I use a cryostat to cut tissue to about  16 micrometer in thickness and immediately stain the section.  Voila, this is what you see under a fluorescence microscope.  That fluorescent blue in the photo shows nerve fibers running through the mouse spleen.  Isn't science just magical! Or at least make pretty pictures, hahaha.

Fluorescent Cells

I was backing up my work computer right now and noticed this data of an experiment I did around June this year and I thought I should share this with you guys.

These were peripheral blood mononuclear cells transformed into macrophages and GFP (green fluorescent protein) DNA was inserted and served as my control for the experiment.

Yes, you can make cells green! I'll tell you about GFP and macrophage next time.