It seems that the weeks left in Germany are beginning to
flash by. We have officially passed the
half-way mark, and there is only a little over a month and a half left over
here. Where did all of the time go?
This past week was a different sort of week for
everyone. With Dr. Moore away at a
conference, the bioengineering students have only had the threat of Tuesday’s
physiology test to deal with. Not only
are the chapters over 20 pages long each, but it is the last test (besides the
final) in this class. Again I wonder, where
did all of the time go? The week of
classes got condensed into the first few days in order to give some of us time
to visit places for our 485 project.
Wednesday morning Chase, Andrea, Austin, and I met up bright an early at
the train station and set out on our way to visit the medical school and
Hannover. Once there, Chase and I set
out for the Regenerative Medicine clinic where we would spend the next two days
shadowing the researchers and learning all about tissue engineering. The research being conducted at this clinic
is astounding. Each researcher is
working on a different project, either trying to grow new tissues on scaffolds,
differentiate adipose cells into muscle or bone, or mimic nature and regrow
entire limbs.
The first day we got introduced to the spiders. The researchers harvest spider silk from the
resident colony of South American spiders to use in scaffolds for growing
tissues. The researchers showed us some
cell cultures under a microscope and you could see the cells beginning to
grow. They have even had success at
re-growing damaged nerves by simply placing a few spider-silk strands connecting
the two tissues and letting the body do the rest. It surprised me to learn that spider silk is
almost the ideal scaffold, as it evokes no immune response in the body and degrades
within four months. So much research in
tissue engineering involves creating biocompatible scaffolds with exactly these
properties, and here this sider’s silk solves all of those problems and occurs
naturally in nature. I managed to get
over my fear of spiders long enough to enter the room where the spiders live,
and even capture one myself and take a turn at harvesting some silk from
it. After seeing these spiders, the
little ones in my bathroom do not seem so bad.
I will probably still freak out every time I see one though.
We also got to see an operation in which one of the doctors
removed vascularized adipose tissue from a rat to use in an experiment. This doctor has so far been able to differentiate
adipose tissue into muscle tissue and is currently working on doing the same
for bone tissue. This is fascinating
stuff, and Chase and I enjoyed putting on dorky masks and scrubs in order to
watch the procedure.
The second day we mostly spent shadowing the other
researchers in the lab. Our “guide” for
the day was a lab worker who was working in the lab doing western blots and
other things for the researchers in order to gain experience. He had graduated from the German equivalent
of high school but was still trying to decide what he wanted to study in
college so he chose to work in the lab for a while. His work reminded me a bit of the way
undergraduate students work in labs back in the states. He would lead us to visit with various
researchers as they worked and interspersed it with showing us how he does the
western blots. It was very interesting
to see the scope of the work being done in the lab. These people were so smart and spoke perfect English,
but they still seemed genuinely happy to talk to us about their work. We watched as they analyzed DNA strands,
cultured cells, and analyzed proteins.
One group even let us try making some thin tissue slices for use in
histological analysis and then put it under the microscope to let us see. We did take a trip downstairs to see the
axolotl salamanders, which have the remarkable ability to regrow their own
limbs. Unfortunately we did not get to
talk with some of the researchers directly involved in the axolotl work, but it
was still neat to see them. They have
the uncanny habit of coming right up to you at the edge of the tank and
following you with their head as you move around the room.
All to soon it was time to head back to Bonn, and we thanked
the researchers and worker that so graciously hosted us for the couple of
days. It was an enlightening visit, and
only confirmed my desire to go into research after I graduate.
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