Laboratory Fundamentals in Biological Engineering

TA Notes For Module 3: Cell-Biomaterial Engineering

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This page contains general preparation notes for the teaching assistants supporting the Module 3 labs. Instructors interested in implementing these labs may contact Agi Stachowiak for additional fine-tuning information.

General Notes

Scheme: Each pair of students will make two cultures, with various modifications as proposed on Day 1.

Key Preparation

Cell derivation from bovine knee joints (from Research 87, Inc.)

• For full derivation protocols, you may contact Agi Stachowiak

• Chondrocytes

• 2-day process (1 afternoon and 1 morning), then can be frozen away

• Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs)

  • initially a 2-day process to get to plating
  • 5-7 days to grow out (can be frozen at that time temporarily)
  • then expand for 2 passages over a few days each time, freeze

• Initial time-intensive part should be done on a non-lab day (Spring Break or President’s Day)

Lots of media to prepare. Some components go bad quickly (proline and ascorbate) and should be added on a daily basis to small amounts of media. Other components (pen/strep/amph, non-essential amino acids, etc.) can be added to a full DMEM bottle to make a base medium.

Note to Instructors Interested in Implementing this Lab

Several changes are being piloted in the summer of 2010 to make the lab more technically robust.  Please contact Agi Stachowiak for details.

• Improve ELISA signal
  • completed
  • in short: after the one day of pepsin digestion, one day of elastase digestion should be done in TBS buffer, pH 8.0
• Add a proteoglycan (PG) assay
  • completed 
  • the standard DMMB assay must be modified for alginate cultures
  • at very low pH, sulfated PG but not alginate are recognized by the DMMB dye
  • based on Enobakhare, et al. in Analytical Biochemistry 243, 189-191 (1996)
  • took similar amount of beads as for collagen assay in a 250 μL volume (of papain/digestion buffer) for a good signal
• Implement qPCR instead of semi-quantitative gel method
  • in progress

Daily Notes

Day 1

No Quiz

Materials required:

1. None: all work today is computer work. Get passing familiarity with the faculty-selected journal articles.

Day 2

Materials required:

• Make sure to go through each group’s plan to know which factors will be modified.

1. 150 mM NaCl in autoclaved water–needs to be sterile filtered
2. 102 mN CaCl2 in autoclaved water–needs to be sterile filtered
3. Cell culture media
4. Alginate–needs to be made the day before lab, allowed to dissolve at 4 °C overnight, then sterile filtered

Day of Lab:

• Quiz (prepared by TA)
• Sterile-filter all alginate on Thursday morning!
• Media already has NEAA, HEPES, PSA; need to add proline, ascorbate, and FCS/ITS
• To be autoclaved, per group
  • 2 beakers for CaCl2 bath
  • 1 sterile spatula, plus couple of extra
• To be aliquoted, per group unless stated otherwise
  • Per microscope, 50 μL aliquot of Trypan blue in eppendorf tube
  • 15 mL conical with exactly 9 mL of medium (per group, plus couple of extra)
  • Other media: 4 mL + 4x 20 mL washes + 24 mL of final version = ~125 mL for 15% excess
  • Have the 24 mL final media in a separate tube, warmed up a bit later, kept cleaner
  • (2) 20ml aliquots of CaCl2
  • (4) 20ml aliquots of NaCl per group; bottles with 185 mL should be good per 2 groups
  • 2ml alginate
• To be set up per hood ahead of time
  • Aspirators set up and tested
  • 2 pipet aids
  • 2 beakers with CaCl2 (pre-warmed); 2 for second group kept in teaching hood
  • 1 eppendorf tube for counting
  • both sizes of tips and pipetmen, set on 1 mL and 90 μL, respectively
• To be available (dry/equipment), per group unless stated otherwise
  • 2 sterile 1 mL syringes and 21 G needles
  • 2 six-well plates
  • Bunch of 25 mL pipets

Spring 2010 specific:

• T/R media needs
  • 6 of 7 groups will just get regular medium, but some will add additives
  • 1 of 7 groups will get regular medium for one sample, and low-FCS/ITS medium for the other
  • thus, total CDR medium (20% excess) needed is ~ 900 mL
  • total special medium needed is ~ 130 mL
• T/R other needs
  • 1 group adding EDTA (release buffer, really) at 1:50
  • 1 group adding triple proline, means 96 μL per 6 mL
  • 1 group adding double ascorbate, means 3 μL per 6 mL
  • 2 groups playing with pH: will need to pre-test HEPES and NaHCO3 in main lab during first half
  • 1 group doing mechanical compression, will need to figure out set-up during first half (for now, sterilize some slides and weights)
• W/F media needs
  • 5 of 7 groups will just get regular medium, but some will add additives
  • 1 of 7 groups will get regular medium for one sample, and low-FCS/ITS medium for the other
  • 1 of 7 groups will get stem cell medium
  • thus, total CDR medium (15% excess) needed is ~ 790 mL
  • total special medium needed is ~ 65 mL
  • total stem cell medium needed is ~ 135 mL
• W/F other needs
  • 1 group adding bFGF at 15 ng/mL, or 0.6 μL per 12 mL, or 6 μL of a 1:10 dilution
  • 1 group is using 51 mM and 204 mM CaCl2, instead of 102 mM - need to prep and filter > 20 mL of each
  • 1 group is using a vortex on one plate - clean and put in separate incubator from rest
  • 1 group gets chondroitin sulfate - need to prepare appropriate stock
• Media exchanges over course of module
  • Should be 3x for each group with all wells, then 2x more with half wells remaining
  • Therefore, per section will need approx. 700 mL media more for semester, or ~ 1.5 L on top of the ~ 1 L needed on the first day

Day 3

Materials required:

1. HBSS (recipe below)
2. dye solution in HBSS
3. 4% glutaraldehyde (GAH) in HBSS
   • Prepared that day from 50% GAH stock
4. 1 sterile spatula per group
5. 1 50ml conical tube for waste per hood
6. 2 Petri dishes per group
7. slides and coverslips
8. Camera and memory disks out

Day of Lab:

1. No Quiz
2. TA will stay with students in TC as they prepare their beads
3. Instructor will stay in the main lab and train students on microscopy

Day 4

Materials required:

• Cell prep
  • lots of empty eppendorfs (don’t need to be sterile)
  • waste tubes or beakers, for aspirations with ser. pipets
  • EDTA-citrate buffer (6 mL per group)
  • complete(ish) medium (9 mL per group)
  • a few eppendorfs w/100 μL of Trypan aliquotted
  • 4 eppendorfs of each of the following per day: 0.6 mL EDTA-citrate, 0.2 mL acetic acid, 0.2 mL pepsin
• RNA prep and RT-PCR
  • 5 ice buckets
  • Water aliquots for spec. measurement
  • Thaw RT-PCR reagents (esp. water) early
  • RLT + β-merc last minute
  • Prep Master Mixes last minute
  • Turn on spec. last minute

Day of Lab:

• Quiz
• See “last minute” above
• Note that g = rcf

Day 5

Materials required:

• ELISA Day 1
  • (2) 96-well plates per group
  • (1) 300ul aliquot of CN I standard per group
    • prep 3.5 mL plus 35 μL
  • (1) 300ul aliquot of CN II standard per group
    • prep 3.5 mL plus 35 μL
  • PBS for diluting standards
  • eppendorfs
  • wash buffer
  • block buffer
  • primary antibodies at 1:4000
    • total needed per antibody ~ 25 mL
    • 3 batches of 10 mL PBS + 2.5 μL antibody
  • parafilm
• Agarose gel
  • loading dye
  • sterile water
  • (2) 1.2% gels per day

Day of Lab:

• Quiz
• RT-PCR products out on cold block
• protein samples briefly thawed just before lab

Day 6

Materials required:

• ELISA Day 2
  • secondary antibody (1:1000, prep 10-15 mL at a time, in block buffer)
  • wash buffer
  • development buffer (1ml of development in 4ml of water per group)
  • pNPP (p-nitrophenyl phosphate) pellets (1 per 5 mL buffer, i.e., per group)
  • aluminum foil
  • stop solution (0.4 M NaOH)

Day of Lab:

• Quiz
  • couple of multichannels at the sink, couple up front
  • students add antibody, development solutions at front bench, sharing 2 dishes per soln.

Day 7

Materials required:

None-all computer work today

Day of Lab:

• Quiz (final one)

Special Materials

• Chondrocyte Growth medium
  • Hi-glucose DMEM
  • 10% FCS (or 0.2% FCS with ITS, for more defined media)
  • Penicillin/Streptomycin/Amphotericin B
    • 100X antibiotic/antimycotic from Sigma
  • Non-essential amino acids
  • Sodium pyruvate
  • Proline (400 μM)
    • Stock: 11.5 mg/mL in DMEM, freeze single-use aliquots
  • HEPES (10 mM)
  • Ascorbate(20 μg/mL)
    • Stock: 20 mg/mL in water, sterile-filter, aliquot and freeze
• Stem Cell Differentiation Medium
  • Hi-glucose DMEM
  • FCS and/or ITS+1 (insulin/transferrin/selenium)
  • Penicillin/Streptomycin/Amphotericin B
  • Non-essential amino acids
  • Sodium pyruvate
  • Proline (400 μM)
  • HEPES (10 mM)
  • Chondrogenic factors
    • TGF-beta1 (10 ng/mL)
    • Dexamethasone (100 nM)
    • Ascorbate (40 μg/mL)
• Stem Cell Expansion Medium
  • Low-glucose DMEM
  • 10% FCS
  • Penicillin/Streptomycin/Amphotericin B
  • HEPES buffer, 10 mM (4-(2-hydroxyethyl)-1-piperazineethanesulfonic acid)
  • up to 5 ng/mL bFGF (basic fibroblast growth factor)
• Release Buffer (weights shown for 0.5 L)
  • 55 mM sodium citrate (8.09 g)
  • 30 mM EDTA (5.58 g)
  • 0.15 M NaCl (4.38 g)
  • pH to 6.8
  • sterile filter
• HEPES buffer
  • stock is 1 M HEPES
  • leave excess volume for adding base, don’t just add water all the way
  • pH to 7.2 (for 100 mL total, initially try 0.5 mL of 1 M NaOH - always test pH and add more as needed)
  • sterile filter
• HEPES-buffered saline solution (HBSS)
  • 135 mM NaCl
  • 5 mM KCl
  • 1 mM MgSO₄
  • 1.8 mM CaCl₂
  • 10 mM HEPES
  • pH to 7.4

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