Lamprou Lab Blog

This summer I spent just over 7 weeks in Trinidad with a group of students carrying out zoology research for the University of Glasgow. It involved tracking some amazing frogs, working with turtles and their hatchlings, hill climbing in 35⁰C heat for water samples, and for myself in particular collecting many foam nests produced by frogs during mating. It was one of the most amazing trips of my life, with an incredible team, and has quickly converted me to love all things herpetology.  The main purpose of this trip was to collect samples, so I could continue work on studying the potential of foam produced by frogs for drug delivery systems, but I learned so much more and I think some of it is important to share. So here are my top 4 tips from my Trinidad trip:

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve had to look down the microscope as a PhD student, and I only ever had to look down the microscope for one reason and that was to check for cell confluency.   This was a critical step during in vitro cell work. It was the time a crucial decision needed to be made as to whether the cells growing in the flask were confluent enough so the cells could be split or seeded? Or if the cells were not confluent and needed to be left to grow for another day or two?