Getting the ball rolling with bioassays

From 30th Jan to 1st Feb I visited prof Suna Timur's group in order to investigate my nanoparticles from a biological standpoint.

I must confess I was super excited because I had never done before any 'bio-stuff' by myself and my knowledge of it is pretty theoretical. Fortunately I was very lucky to have Dr Ece Bayır to guide me through this. Ece is a great scientist and fun person to work with. Through her guidance I managed to achieve a lot in only three days learning about cytotoxicity and cellular permeation assays and my favorite of them all fluorescence microscope!!! I was literally bowled over by the fact that I could actually visualise living cells and see whether or not my nanoparticles could get into it by following a fluorescence probe.

Results are still very preliminary but encouraging. Most probably I will have to go again to reproduce them and improve some aspects of the protocol.

I was also deeply impressed by the great hospitality of the Aegean people. They are truly great ambassador of the rich and colourful Turkish culture. I loved my days here and I look forward to coming back soon :)