January 19,  2009
How to Use a Hemacytometer

French  physiologist Louis-Charles Malassez (1842-1909) studied a lot of things in his life. In dentistry, the residual cells of the epithelial root sheath in the periodontal ligament are now called the epithelial rests of Malassez. A genus of fungi is also named for him, which includes species that can cause dandruff and other skin infections.
Malassez also invented the hemacytometer, the thick glass microscope slide traditionally used to count the number of cells in a given volume of liquid.

You just got out of that meeting with your PI, where you decided to check the expression level of YFG (your favorite gene) in YFO (your favorite organism). It sounded so easy on paper and you left with a smile. Quantitative PCR how hard can it be? Then it hits you! We don’t have a qPCR machine? What are intron-spanning primers? How do I design primers? Why do they need to span introns? It’s then you realize it’s time to roll up your sleeves and suffer a bit, yep, work.