Day 5 - Last day with Rini and Hui Yee:')

Day 4 - Hands-on experience!

Day 4 of our attachment! Today, we were posed with our first task as a team - to create multiple solutions of different dilution. This will then be used to determine the concentration of an unknown sample.

We started by pipetting a known volume of sample into a vial and topping it up with water. Then we extracted a portion of this sample into another vial, where we topped it up to the same mark with more water.

Next, we took turn to pipette out samples into a 96-well plate and placed it into a spectrophotometer. The spectrophotometer measures the amount of light that is absorbed by the sample object. The program plotted a graph of luminous intensity against concentration of the sample. The ideal gradient we were supposed to achieve is 1.0!

The three lab mice waited anxiously for the reveal of the results! Amazingly, the gradient we got was 0.99 - a mere 0.01 shy of the ideal value. We also learnt the application of Beer-Lambert's theory in spectrophotometers to measure concentrations of samples.

This ended day 4 of our attachment! Excited to find out what challenge awaits us tomorrow! :)

Day 3 - Making of liposomes!

Day 3! What did we learn today?


We watched a demonstration of the making of liposomes from powdered lipids!

58.6mg of lipid, dissolved in 2ml of methanol and 1ml of chloroform and add fluorescent dye. then wrap the round bottom flask with aluminum foil to prevent the fluorescent dye from degrading, then put it in the rotary evaporator for an hour.

Subsequently, add buffer to the lipid film and put it in the water bath at 60 degree Celsius to ensure complete hydration of the lipid. then perform extrusion, which is  a process where the mixture passes through a nano filter to decrease the size of the lipids.

This hands-on gave us a deeper understanding on the process of creating liposomes.

Day 2 - The three lab mice enter the lab

Hello everybody! we are the three lab mice from Nanyang Junior College! we are embarking on this 2-week work attachment at NTU and these are some of the things that we learned today.

1. Safety in Lab

Safety is the utmost importance in labs especially when we are dealing with expensive equipment and hazardous chemicals. We have to wear protective gears such as lab coat and hair cap.

2. Meeting our Mentors

We are attached to Rini and Hui Yee to learn from their PhD project which is the study on Transport of Sustained Release Carriers for Delivery of Therapeutic Agents to the Posterior Segment of the Eye. 

3. Hands on Experiment

The three lab mice were put to a test after watching Rini's demonstration on how to dilute a 10.0 microlitre solution using a pipette. It was interesting how we have to be more cautious of what we are doing compared to that of the experiments we do in school. It is very intriguing as we are handling nanomaterials which are 'nanoscopic'. We also witness the real life application of Brownian Motion with of Zetasizer which is a machine which uses dynamic light scattering to track the speed of the movement which is proportionate to the size of the particle. It was a very interesting experiment because we had to take note of every minor detail such as ensuring no air bubbles on the inner surface of the cuvette or scratches on the cuvette as they will interfere with the scattering of light which hence results in inaccuracy in the data. 

4. Tour around the Lab

Rini brought us around the lab, introducing us to most of the instruments in the lab, such as the Rotary Evaporator and the Sonificator. There are also fridges that keep things under -80 degree Celsius to slow down decomposition of cells or tissues.

5. Personal Experience with Rini

It was great talking to Rini and learning about her life as a researcher and found that her keys to success are time management, internal motivation and self discipline. Also, she stays efficient by maximising her productivity.

Overall it was a fun day! YAY!! End of Day 2 :)