down the drain

Might as well add some bleach for extra measure.

I had a two day timepoint to collect the cells from the tissue culture, and set them up for anaylsis. I was curious because this time I'd be counting white cells, and red cells. I was curious to see how many red cells survive the culture at this timepoint.

The suspension was cloudy, but not more than usual. I just figured that there were still lots of red blood cells in there.

Take out some cells, add the two dyes to count cells, and determine what's alive, dead, or a red blood cell.

Look in the microscope, and it's full of debris. It's so bad, I can't figure out what's dead, and BARELY determine what's a red blood cell and what's a white blood cell.

Damn, the Trypan dye gets full of debris as the bottle gets opened repeatedly. Filtered it, same result. Filtered the second dye, even though it looked clean with the same results.

Fudge.

The last thing to try and filter was the cell suspension. Too bad the only filter units we had available also caught my cells in the filter. All I was left with was a reduced amount of debris.

FUDGE

Just to be certain, I looked at both dyes individually and they were clean.

So my culture has a lot of debris from something. Not sure where it came from because I've never seen it before.

I'm thinking a possible mold contamination (it was setup Saturday when it was raining which is inviting disaster). So now I get to fret the next 10 days to see what happens with the other dishes.