I spoke with Kelly Trujillo about cell synchronizing after Koch had mentioned to me that we may need this for ddw yeast studies. He mentioned that he was going to be synchronizing for a study that he was setting up and that I could come learn the process. So I took him up on his offer.

I have to say, the protocol is surprisingly simple. Kelly grew a colony, diluted it to about 0.1 OD and then let it divide up to 0.4 OD. We looked at the asynchronous growth and then he added some mating pheromone (details to come) to some of the culture to halt the cells in G1 phase of cell division. From here, he could synchronize them to enter S phase by using hydroxyurea (HU) after washing out the mating pheromone. The remaining culture was arrested in G2/M phase with the drug Nocodazole.

We paused during each step to look at each culture (asynch, G1, S, and G2) but I have no pictures. I do have the knowledge to do it myself and hope to incorporate this in the DDW experiments shortly. A preplanning thread will come soon.