(BE-BOAT) Mammalian Cell and Tissue Culture (Virtual)

In BE-BOAT courses, students obtain an overview of Bioengineering and learn specific hands-on foundation techniques. Each course uses custom lab kits, has Pre-lab planning exercises, lab acquisition and analyses of Results, and post-lab Discussions. These programs build science and engineering foundations and enable a guided research project in BE-ROW. Interested students normally progress from BE-BOAT to BE-ROW and then BE-SHIP. Students who excel in BE-BOAT may request to advance directly to BE-SHIP. In this 2 week course, at UCSD (limited spots anticipated) or in their home "lab", students will obtain (A) hands-on skills training for mammalian cell and tissue culture and (B) background knowledge of how such culture methods are used. Students will learn how to (1) plan, prepare, and deliver solutions to propagate mammalian cells and grow tissues, (2) visualize and obtain digital microscopy images of such cells, tissues, and cultures, (3) interpret biochemical assays to quantify cell and tissue growth, and (4) analyze qualitative and quantitative data in an integrative way. Students will be able to use and learn about standard equipment including micropipettes, serological pipets, culture plates, and digital light microscopes appropriate for cell cultures. Thus, students will obtain the core skills and knowledge of mammalian cell and tissue culture, used in academia and industry to investigate the cause and potential treatments for diseases including cancer, neurodegeneration, myocardial infarction, diabetes, osteoporosis, and arthritis, and to engineer new cell and tissue-based regenerative therapies. The above knowledge and skills provide general foundations for Biological & BioMedical Sciences, BioTechnology & BioEngineering, and Tissue Engineering & Regenerative Medicine.