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Week Four Progress

Our focus this week was finding the correct placebo for our design. Prior to this week, we had expected to use zinc oxide in our module but we realized it did not have a high enough molecular weight. Therefore, the zinc oxide would disperse from the hydrogel beads too rapidly. After some research and guidance from our professor, we decided to use Fluorescein Isothiocyanate-Bovine Serum Album (FITC-BSA), which is a hydrophilic protein with a molecular weight of 66 kg/mol [1]. FITC-BSA will also be our signal source for measuring the rate of dispersion from the beads. As seen in Figure 1, FITC-BSA is vivid in color and allows the protein's diffusion throughout the hydrogel to be observed easily. We've decided to initially use 0.25 mg/ml as the concentration of FITC-BSA within our design.

Image result for fitc bsa
Figure 1: FITC-BSA (green) seen in samples of HeLa cells [2]

References:
[1]  Bovine Serum Albumin Conjugates Product Information, 1st ed. Molecular Probes, 2005.
[2] S. Sarker, R. Hokama, S. Takeoka, Intracellular delivery of FITC − BSA (green) in HeLa cells. Intracellular Delivery of Universal Proteins Using a Lysine Headgroup Containing Cationic Liposomes: Deciphering the Uptake Mechanism, 2013.



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