Lab Techniques in Mammalian Cell Biology

The practicals will give you hands-on experience in:

• good cell culture practice, including safety procedures, control of facilities, equipment, reagents
• qualitative characteristics of mammalian cell cultures: cell counting and analysis
• cryopreservation and cell banking
• sterility and microbial contamination tests
• maintenance and manipulation of stem cells, primary and established cell lines under various experimental conditions (mitogenic stimulation, exposure to cellular stresses and major signal transduction inhibitors)
• transient transfection of mammalian cells, expressing wild type and mutant proteins
• immunofluorescent analysis of subcellular localisation of transiently expressed proteins
• quantitative analysis of immunofluorescent images by computer software
• assessing the viability and proliferation of cells grown under various experimental conditions using the MTT Cell Proliferation Assay

In addition, Thermo Fisher Scientific will demonstrate their EVOS imaging system.

Lectures will focus on the following topics:

• Whole tissue/cell techniques (immunofluorescence and immunoelectron microscopy, subcellualr fractionation, FACS analysis etc.)
• The control of cellular metabolism and growth by signalling pathways
• Interactions between cells and their environments: general principles in cell signalling and signal transduction
• Regulation of cell survival and proliferation in mammalian cells
• Cell biology underlying vertebrate limb regeneration
• Stem cell biology in health and disease
• Human pluripotent stem cells in culture

The course will include a lecture by David Gems, Professor of Biogerontology and Deputy Director of the Institute of Healthy Ageing at UCL.