Week 7: Almost There!

Hi everyone! We are approaching the end of the senior project. Wow! This week we finally figured out the volume issue after spending a whole day testing out parameters. We figured out that the best way to go about it was through decreasing the background subtraction and increasing the amount of fluorescence we take. I’m still not entirely sure what background subtraction does, but it seems to make smaller sections, which allows us to better control the overall volume. This version is not perfect, but the numbers we get out of it make sense given how big the volumes appear to us by eye. I’m going to have a meeting with my mentor soon to better discuss this overall issue. 

I also finished looking through and checking all of my PCDH15 data! I’m starting to finalize graph types and format for my final poster. I was thinking of doing one that looks at TS of PCDH15+ compared to negative cells for both ES and S and one with only ES. I also plan on adding the cell count bar graph that I showed you guys before. My poster will also include FSCN2 data, which I haven’t talked about for a while. The data for that is done, but I still have to check it, which I will prioritize for the rest of the week and next week. For FSCN2, I will similarly include a TS graph, but I also hope to do something about intensity. When I look at the FSCN2 images, it is very clear that the size of the hair bundle correlates with how intensely FSCN2 is expressed. Bigger bundles that express FSCN2 have a dimmer expression and vice versa. Some potential problems with this are the volume selected because we use the volume surface to get the intensity of FSCN2 expression on the bundle. I hope that our new volume parameters can help improve the accuracy of this, but I will need to test it on older data to make sure the numbers make sense. 

Next week, I hope to come back with some finalized graphs and a finished introduction for my poster. See you then!