The second week of my internship started off with doing the same set of experiments as the week before. I was just culturing the cells and splitting them into different flasks, so that they wouldn't overpopulate and die. Tuesday, however, I started the more interesting part of the experiment. I had to culture these lung cells in a little device called ECIS, which measures the electricity between each cell. This device has a channel in it where the cells grow, and it is to mimic the conditions of the capillaries in the lung. I used this device to then see what would happen to the healthy cells if I pushed an air bubble through the channel. Pushing the air bubble through the channel is like using a ventilator on a lung, and when we did this on the device, the healthy cells survived. Then we weakened the cells with acid, and when we pushed the air bubble through this time, the cells died. From this, we concluded that if a patient, who is already not healthy, is put on a ventilator, could have the cells inside the lungs killed. This part of the experiment was very interesting because it encompassed the overall picture of the research but also incorporated the skills I learned from the week before.
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