The Winding Road of Progress - Thomas DiSorbo

Since my last blog, I have made substantial progress to my research project. Ironically, the progress did not come steadily, but rather appeared almost all at once, only a few days ago. 

I am attempting to use electrical signals to partially lyse a single cell and the past two weeks have centered mostly around searching for a suitable electrode configuration for the lysis. Working with a set of pre-designed electrodes, I have been testing designs for their ability to both electrically “capture” cells, which occurs via an electric force called dielectrophoresis, and “lyse” them, or destroy their outer membranes. Because I am working with electrode arrays designed for other purposes and attempting to adapt them to my project, there has been a lot of experimentation over suitable designs -- the electrodes should be small enough to target a single cell yet strong enough to destroy the cell. I finally found a design that allows for both targeted cell capture and cell lysis. This electrode allows me to begin investigation into partial cell lysis, where I will attempt to rupture the outer cell membrane while preserving the inner nuclear membrane. 

Soldering station where I make connections for the electrodes

Though there is still much work to be done, but it is a refreshing to have meaningful, impactful data to parse through and analyze, where I am challenged to ask reaching questions with future implications instead of simply trying to understand what went wrong. This process is the ebb and flow of scientific investigation that I have found pervades every research position I have held. Progress has a choppy flow, but failures are often necessary to find solutions.

LabView program I wrote to control a waveform generator

The past few weeks I have had more time to reflect on the community at imec as a whole. In contrast to my experiences in America, many of my team members here make a point of eating lunch together. This time at lunch seems to be the most frequent time they are all together as a group, as they have a relatively strict cap on the time limit for their biweekly team meetings. This is something I have not experienced in America, where the meetings have often run much longer. It is interesting and endearing to see how in either environment, there remains an emphasis team interaction and community.