Soggy September weekend in Seattle

*This was supposed to be posted on the 30th Sept but I was waiting for time/photos*

This week I have done my first solo experiment... First things first a little catch up on my weekend. I was house sitting for my previous owners (Laurie and John) this weekend. On Saturday I decided to have breakfast at the local IHOP a bus ride and walk away, which is fine when it isn't torrential rain. By the time I stood in the IHOP I was literally dripping and had a 20 minute wait for a table before I could order my regular (coffee with 'Irish coffee' creamer and strawberry and banana pancakes). Unfortunately I wasn't the only thing soaked through, luckily my passport stayed dry in it's leather case - yes I do carry it everywhere because it has my visa, paperwork and health insurance info in it.

extra soggy saturday

Once I got home I curled up on the sofa with some friends and used my newly acquired wool and needles to knit a tea cosy whilst I washed my ipod (unintentionally).

'some friends'

Finished Tea Cosy

Anyway back to that all important experiment. The reason I am here is to learn to study immune regulation. In type 1 diabetes the damage to the pancreas is caused by the body's immune system incorrectly attacking itself. There are a number of systems in place to stop this happening in the majority of the human race, although that majority is slowly declining as autoimmune diseases become more common. Once the immune system gets going even in the case of a viral or bacterial infection you have to have something that puts the breaks on the system otherwise you'd end up damaging all your healthy tissue. This is why regulation is so important. One of the important parts of the immune system (*importance being determined by which ever immunologist you are talking to at that point, they all have pretty important roles to play) are T-cells. They come in a few varieties; Teffs ramp up the immune system and cause the destruction of infections, or your pancreas (if you on the path to diabetes). Tregs basically stop the Teffs. Imagine the immune system is a car on the brow of a hill, the Teffs are the wheels, they do the business part of the moving, but there is also a positive feedback, once you go over the brow of the hill, you'll keep going and actually pick up speed and Tregs are the brakes that should slow you down. The aim of my game is to grow the Teffs (i.e. get them to multiply - which I can measure) and see how adding Tregs slows this down. Why this is important is because we think in people with diabetes that the clutch is broken, that is to say the Teffs don't pay attention to the signal from the Tregs to slow down, so they keep on rolling down the hill till they... *crash*

So if you followed any of that then you'll understand when I say this week I succeed in getting the wheels moving and the breaks engaged to stop it (a bit), that constitutes success! Although there is lots to improve and this was on samples from a healthy person...