How do hemocytes change when they interact with different bacteria?

I've been trying to figure out how squid immune cells (hemocytes) change the amount of certain proteins they express and where these proteins are in the cells when they interact with different kinds of bacteria. I use confocal microscopy and immunofluorescence to see how much of the protein is present and where the protein is in the cell (i.e. in the cytosol, in vesicles, in the nucleus, etc). Not only is this informative for our research, but it's great data to show off because it's so beautiful!

Right now I don't have quite enough data to publish this, but with a few more experiments I hope to be able to make some solid conclusions about how interacting with bacteria changes the protein landscape in squid hemocytes.

In other news, we had some donors come to visit the lab a few weeks ago, and I got to show off our confocal microscope that I use to take these images.

 

It was great to have people come out and see our lab! There are few things scientists love talking about more than their research.

We also got to show off our bioluminescent bacteria. Some of you have probably already seen this, but you can watch one of our former lab mates explaining how bacteria glow in this video: