We previously explored cellular behavior on porous substrates and discontinuous substrates. We have seen differences in cell migration and cell-substrate interactions in the form of altered f-actin polymerization, focal adhesion formation, and fibronectin fibrillogenesis on these discontinuous substrates. We were curious about mechano-sensing on these substrates. To investigate mechano-sensing on disrupted surface, we developed a…

Here are my proposal exam materials for reference. Proposal Document: Proposal_Salminen Proposal Presentation (No Animations or Videos): Proposal Presentation_No Animations

Word Document: Blog Write Up 4.8.19 Over the past two weeks I have been working on creating a protocol to eliminate the organic debris from environmental water samples, leaving only microplastics behind on the silicon filters. The goal for this is to be able to really isolate out just the plastic in environmental samples making…

This post has been a long time coming, but I have finally (essentially) finished all the work for Aim 1 of my thesis. (Credit to Dan for helping with part of it and getting a thesis along the way, see his post here: https://trace-bmps.org/critical-flux-of-ultrathin-silicon-membranes-in-tangential-flow-filtration-of-protein-solutions/) Up until this point, I have been attempting to validate my…

The goal of this set of experiments was to study the growth rate of cells in 3 different media; 1. Complete Media 2. Exosome Free Media 3. Serum Free Media. We studied the effect of media on both ADSCs and FBs. Cells growth was monitored by a Matlab code that Henry has made for us….

This post is an accumulation of the results obtained from my research thus far. To recap, my intent (for my masters thesis) is to provide context for critical flux optimization in NPN microfluidic devices, particle capture, and compare critical flux in NPN to traditional track etched (TE) devices. Note that “critical flux” is the flux…

Introduction Aline and SiMPore are producing devices at much higher manufacturing rates than we were capable of in the McGrath lab. In order to verify that these manufactured devices are capable of growing cells and allowing for cell survival, live/dead assays were performed on human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) grown 48 hours on either…

Introduction Motivation: We want to assess if the bladder cancer cell line T24 would influence the baseline characteristics of bladder epithelial cells (BdEC, a.k.a. ATCC® PCS-420-010™) when the two cell types are cultured together. Ultimately, we are interested if the T24 induces BdEC malignancy (turning the normal epithelial cells cancerous). Goal: Investigate if BdEC monolayer will break…