Project Outline

We nucleofected Sec61 beta plasmid labeled with mCherry into LLC-Pk1 cells in order to mark the endoplasmic reticulum. To verify that the plasmid marked the ER, we planned to use an ER tracker to stain the ER. Unfortunately, both the ER tracker and our labelled cells fluoresced mCherry. We thus chose to stain parental LLC-Pk1 cells with the ER tracker, with the understanding that if we stained our nucleofected cells with the marker, it would be difficult to distinguish between fluorescence signal from the plasmid or the tracker. We compared the overall ER morphology from each set of cells to determine if they mark relatively the same location.