Sixth Form Student Outreach Day

Just before our winter break, we welcomed two A-level students from Haberdashers' Boys' School into our lab for a day of science outreach, to give them a taste of what it’s like to study science at university and working a as professional scientist.

Sam and Krishna started the morning with a presentation by Ian, which explained our groups’ work on glymphatics and the types of laboratory/imaging techniques we use on a day-to-day basis.

Krishna pipetting transgenic tau mice brain samples into a gel for electrophoresis and part of Sophie's Western blot protocol.

This was followed by a lab tour which concluded in our wet lab. Here, they were given a crash-course in how to use a pipette, a skill they used to successfully load some of our mouse brain samples into a 10-well polyacrylamide gel for electrophoresis, as part of Sophie’s AQP4 Western blot.

The proteins Sam and Krishna precipitated with Sheila; best seen when held up to the light.

They then observed Sheila’s mouse brain RNA extraction, helping precipitate the proteins from the samples and determining the sample RNA concentrations using the Nanodrop.

Parkinson's model mouse brain slice showing alpha-synuclein protein aggregates fluorescing under the microscope.

After lunch, the students observed Ian embedding a fixed mouse brain, previously infused with Texas Red fluorescent dye, in preparation for brain slices to put on microscope slides. Doug also showed them some of our Parkinson’s model mouse brain slices which have been stained with an alpha-synuclein antibody, these protein aggregates fluoresced under the microscope, displaying a neuropathological hallmark of Parkinson’s disease.

We hope both Sam and Krishna had a fun and informative day at our lab, and hopefully we have convinced them that science is an amazing career path! We wish them the best of luck in all their future endeavours, especially with their A-level exams next summer.

Click here to read Sam and Krishna's review of this experience.

If you are a student or teacher who is interested in joining us for a lab outreach day, please get in contact with Ian (ian.harrison@ucl.ac.uk).