20210304
Summary UiO LifeScience project LagLivLab - Meeting 04 March 2021
Present: Dag Kristian Dysthe, Stefan Krauss, Ørjan Grøttem Martinsen, Thomas Combriat, Denis Reis de Assis, Steffen Nøvik, Yi Hu, Kayoko Shoji, Nigar Abbasova, Morten Pedersen Hauger, Anniken Bjørnstad, Håvard K. Bjerke, Luis Jonathan Gunga, Mats Asakskogen Landfald, Vilde Reinertsen, Kjetil Gullen Thomassen.
This was the first LagLivLab meeting with the presence of the first group of students (total of ten). It was in the form of zoom meeting and started at 5 pm. Initially, Prof. Dag Dysthe introduced himself, talked briefly about the LagLivlab. He pointed out the importance of documenting the work that is being done (especially through videos), of using tools to share interesting papers and protocols, and that one important goal is trying to have results publishable as scientific papers.
Then, Prof. Dag Dysthe gave the opportunity for all 10 students and for the supervisors to introduce themselves. The majority of students are currently in the second and third year of different graduation courses, whereas the supervisors are professors, postdoctoral fellows and PhD students from the Physics Department and from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Oslo, constituting thus a highly interdisciplinary group.
In a second moment, the first three projects proposed for the initial activities of the LagLivLab were presented. Dr. Kayoko Shoji presented the “Bioactuator Project”, explaining how it is possible to use skeletal muscles as bioactuators, as well as the challenges of the project, and the goal of doing a “contest of force” at the end of the project. A myoblast cell line (C2C12) will be used in the project due to low cost and high proliferation rate. Then, Prof. Dag Dysthe presented the “µfluid Cell Culture Project”. He briefly explained about the conditions and advantages of microfluid cell cultures, emphasizing the possibility of publishing original results by using as novelty impedance as a strategy to determine cell number in the system. Prof. Ørjan Martinsen presented the “Electrorotation Project”. He briefly explained how applying an electrical field to cells provokes a cell rotation that can be measured and depends on cell membrane properties, being useful to identify changes in cells of the same type or the presence of distinct cell types in a sample. It is still not defined the cell types to be used in the ““µfluid Cell Culture Project”, and in the Electroporation Project”.
After a section of questions and answers about the project presentations, it was established that each student has to choose one of the projects. The minimum number of students will be 3 per project, and the maximum 5 per project.
Prof. Dag Dysthe confirmed that in the next meeting, which will be held next week, the LagLivLab members will start to discuss about the projects. Physical meetings for up to 10 people are approved by the direction of the Physics department.
It has been suggested as an effective way of communication the use of WhatsApp, and it was asked that the members of the LagLivLab add their names and phone numbers in the Google Docs. They may communicate also by email, being the LagLivLab team email address to reach the students and the LagLivLab Support address to reach the supervisors. Another possibility is creating a Slack group, as well as organizing zoom meetings. The meeting ended about 6 pm.
