Lisa Jansen, Quinn Gafton, and Kirsten Dunlap working to prep samples for analysis of genes and proteins contributing to muscle health
It’s been another busy week or two at the IMML! Over the past weeks we’ve added an additional PhD student research assistant to our crew. Lisa Jansen will be joining our group for the remainder of her PhD, and she joined at an exciting time! Since returning from ACSM it has been sample prep central in the IMML. Our June goal was to prep three different muscles for multiple different analysis of genes and proteins involved in maintaining muscle health. Counting everything up, this adds up to 250 samples, and thus far the IMML has been rocking the sample prep. Coming into the last week of June we are almost done and will be ready to hit the ground running on data analysis in July.
In other exciting news, the IMML recently found out that we in collaboration with Dr. Jeff Wolchok we received funding from the Arkansas Biosciences Institute for some new equipment. One piece of equipment will allow us to measure how much force a muscle can produce and how quickly that muscle becomes fatigued. This will help to determine how different diseases such as cancer, affect muscle strength and endurance. We also will be receiving a muscle cell stimulator. This fun toy will allow us to grow muscle cells in a special dish that will both stretch/contract muscle cells as well stimulate muscle cells with small amounts of electricity. This is how our muscles work in our bodies, a neuron gives a quick jolt to the muscle and then the muscle contracts to help us move around. Our new toy will help us simulate muscle more accurately in a dish, so we can more specifically investigate how the muscle changes during certain diseases. We are really excited to receive this new equipment and get to some awesome sciencing!
Our new equipment will allow us to stretch and contract muscle cells in a dish, as well as stimulate cells like how muscles in our body work!
Also, our collaborators in the Exercise Muscle Biology Laboratory also received Arkansas Bioscience Institute funding to investigate how certain amino acids affect muscle health during cancer. We know that amino acids can help muscles grow when combined with resistance exercise. However, cancer cells also like to grow, so if amino acids can help muscles grow, can they also help cancer cells grow? That’s the central question of the research study! So stay tuned and the great folks in the Exercise Muscle Biology Laboratory will have answers for us in the upcoming year!
It’s been an exciting couple weeks, we are ready to finish up strong this week, take a short break for 4th of July and get back to a summer of sciencing!
Cheers!
Megan