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Mr Simpson Case Study

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Confocal Microscopy of Cerebral Cortex Neurons damaged by Doughnutostupidiotis Introduction The Simpsons are constantly in the limelight with their own reality television show however, celebrity status does not protect Homer Simpson from a diagnosis of stupidity, caused by the over indulgence of icing coated, ring shaped boiled pieces of bread. According to the Butter and Jelly (2000) the overeating of this food item lead to Mr. Simpson falling into a coma for several weeks, before waking up. Doctor Riviera (2013) followed the case of Mr. Simpson through his diagnosis of doughnutostupidiotis through to his inevitable death. According to Riviera (2013) the key symptoms of this disease is reduced executive functioning in the frontal lobe which …show more content…

The aim of this experiment is to examine Mr. Simpson’s brain and investigate if there is any structural changes at the cellular level that would explain Simpson’s condition and perhaps answer why there was a significant amount of gene coding seemingly removed from his cells. Rivera hypothesised that perhaps a mutant virus that was passed on by excessive consumption of doughnuts had eaten through cells in the cerebral cortex leaving behind hindered gene coding that was effective enough for Homer to function at a baseline level. To investigate this the following techniques of confocal microscopy and fluorescence labelling were …show more content…

The Thermofisher website (2015) was used to determine which labels would best suitable for this experiment. For imaging the cell nuclei the marker HCS NuclearMask Blue Stain will be used as it can be utilised to measure DNA content. In terms of this experiment the whole cell was stained, this marker labelled the entire cell including the cytoplasm and nucleus. This particular marker is excited by Ultra Violet light at 355nm and required an emission filer for 350/451nm. The second labelled used in this experiment was Alexa Fluor-647 that was used to fluoresce the axonal projections for cells. This marker is excited by a light source which in this experiment was a laser at 640nm and required an emission filter for the floid red channel which covered 646/68nm. These markers were already prepared and just needed to be added to the cell slides and incubated over night to ensure a good enough

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