Sabine Week 5

Things are getting pretty routine, by now. I’ve gotten comfortable with the protocols/procedures in the lab. For example, during my first week, Rob gave me a procedure for DNA isolation to read over, with the intention that it would give me an idea of what we would be doing when we actually carried the procedure out. I read it, and had no idea what any of it meant! But just the other day, Rob gave me a procedure to read, and I understood for the most part what it would be like, because I had already done lots of similar things! It was a good feeling.

Also, the other day, Rob said that I was a good pipetter. I’m not sure if he was actually serious, because I mess up A LOT but I’m just going to give myself the benefit of the doubt and take it as a compliment!

We finished the experiment with the BMP3 expression in liver and inguinal fat in mice at 5 days, 10 days, and 21 days old. Rob hasn’t had time yet to show me the results, but he said that we got very interesting and unexpected results. I look forward to hearing about it. I’ll tell you in the next blog what the results were, because I don’t actually know right now!

Since we’re done with that experiment, we’ve moved onto a new one. This one involves isolating micro-RNA. We need to isolate a certain micro-RNA, called miRNA 335, so that we can see if knocking out a gene called “Mest interferes with miRNA 335. It’s important for us to know whether miRNA 335 is affected because Rob thinks that it could help regulate adipogenesis. Adipogenesis is the formation of fat. Rob thinks that part of the coding for miRNA 335 could be knocked out along with the Mest gene in the knockout mice, so the purpose of this experiment is to see if miRNA 335 is expressed differently in the mice that have the Mest gene knocked out when compared to the normal mice.

This week, I’ve started isolating the micro-RNA. It’s almost the same procedure as isolating RNA, so it’s not too new. It seems like in the lab, they do a lot of the same procedures on different samples. There’s a lot of tedious, repetitive lab work. For example, it took Rob and me almost a week just to use DNA testing to make sure we were using the right mice!

I went to two lectures on Thursday. Every Thursday, there are lectures, so I try to take advantage of them and attend! The second one was particularly interesting. The lady who gave the lecture was a neonatal neurologist, so what she does is she looks at images of the brains of babies in the womb, and very young babies. If she sees an abnormality, she is the one who discusses it with the family, tries to predict the implications of this abnormality, and advise them on what they should do. She often deals with brain injuries/development problems that lead the parents to terminate the pregnancy. She told us about a few brain hemorrhages that she has had to deal with. One baby developed a brain hemorrhage in the womb, and the accumulation of blood got in the way of part of the brain from being formed, so the baby was literally missing part of its brain when it was born. It sounded very scary and sad. She does 60% of her work as a doctor, and 40% as a researcher. For her research, she is testing out an alternative way to predict cerebral palsy in babies. Normally, an MRI is used, but she is testing out a method in which the doctor studies a two-minute video of the baby and watches for abnormal movements. For example, a normal baby will flail and flourish its limbs, while a baby whose brain developed improperly will have very stiff, unnatural movements. By tracking the movements/behaviors of the baby over time, the doctor can predict what the child will be like in the future, and keep track of whether the condition is getting better or worse. Right now, she’s comparing the results obtained by this observational method to the results obtained using an MRI. She thinks that if it proves to be as effective as an MRI, observing the baby’s movements would be a better method because it is cheaper, easier, etc. I thought it was very interesting that she managed to find a balance between clinical work and research. She was extremely smart and passionate. She was pretty cool. I liked her. It sounds like she has to deal with some really serious/sad situations on a pretty regular basis, though. She also gave us an overview on how the brain develops in a baby. She explained that the brain starts out basically as a tube, and then it folds in such a complex and inefficient manner that it’s hard to believe that the process even works at all!

My entire host family is sick right now, so I really hope I don’t catch it! Emma (the 11 year old) had a fever of 101 degrees the other night. Poor thing, I feel so bad for her. Because everyone was sick, they weren’t able to make it to the BBQ that Rob invited them to. I think he was looking forward to meeting them, but oh well. I just went to the BBQ by myself.

I’m really going to miss the girls who I’ve been running with when I leave! They are all so nice and fun and funny and easy to talk to! And they get me out running when I would have never gone on my own. Thursday morning, I woke up early to find that it was raining. But there was a team run scheduled, so I dragged myself out of bed and went running with a few girls in the rain before heading to the Research Institute and it felt great! I never would have done that by myself!  But yes they are great and I will miss them dearly even though I barely know them.

I am having some serious technical difficulties with my phone right now, so I can’t access any of the pictures or videos that I have taken throughout the week! My phone freezes up whenever I try to do basically anything, so of course, it won’t let me upload pictures to my computer to put on the blog. I’m going to try to take it in and get it fixed, and if I do get it fixed, I’ll post another blog for this week that includes pictures and videos, but I can’t include any media right now. I know it’s a bummer! I’m sorry! I hope my explanations will suffice for now.

I think six weeks is the perfect amount of time to be here. It’s just long enough to get settled in, but not too long that I get tired of it. I think one more week will be perfect for me. Gosh, this is a wonderful opportunity. Thank you so much, Pinhead, for setting me up!