So.. I did a lot of fun stuff the last couple weeks. We started a new and awesome project with university, about two weeks ago we got two dead pigs, the various body parts had been assigned to different lab partners in an effort to isolate stem cells from all kinds of different places. Me and my partner got the most promising source, the bone marrow. And I'm pretty sure we've succeeded. Three days ago I put our culture under a microscope and found cells that look like stem cells, and seem to behave like stem cells!
I heard from our supervising prof that a different (far more prestigious) university in the Netherlands started basically the same project at the same time as us, so we've even got something to compare our stuff to. For now we're optimizing the protocols for the culture, growth and isolation of stem cells for our own school laboratory. But if we do this right the prof can let next years project group build upon what we're doing now, grow the cells easily from protocols and frozen reserves we've made for them. And they can start doing some truly awesome stuff.
Unfortunately there is also a big theoretical side to my course, and I still have to retake some tests I failed in my first year, if I fail them again now I'll be kicked out with absolutely nothing to show for the past two years of work. So that's pretty stressful, but I love this new project, and really hope I'll be able to ace the upcoming tests.