Australia's Science Forum

I'm hoping someone is around reading.......

Since cheek cells are a no no, HOS wants to look at skin cells (each student doing their own). Anyone have any idea on how to go about it? I'm thinking sticky tape on the arm and then???

I will have a play at looking at them direct and also trying to wash them off in maybe saline but wanted so more brains on the case

Hi there- some of us are still here... Don't know what the regs are in Tassie but here in WA all human tissue is banned- so I would take that to mean skin cells as well. Just a thought- maybe skin scrape the skin on a chicken wing or leg from the butchers and make smears from this.

We do the sticky tape thing here (also can still do cheek cells!) and it works well. Can't believe that would be banned, then nobody would be allowed to touch anybody!

i believe QLD have gone back to doing cheek cells with a strict guideline on how it is done.
Souj has iit right - WA we still are not allowed to do any human tissue including skin.
i do know people that do the chicken wing scrapping but i have not tried it myself...... let us know how you go. So long as they dont over do the scrapping it works well. the students can over scrape and have way too many cells apparently.

Do a search for cheek cells and you will find that the reasons for not using any bodily fluids etc have been outlined before. Namely HIV, Hep B and Hep C. I used to hate the enzyme prac using student spit. It was revolting and I had to clean the test tubes afterwards. It was so gross.
Lyn.

Thanks for that. How do I do the chicken wing scraping? Do you scrap the skin with a swab? blade? My HOD's husband is a butcher, so getting chicken is easy and free!