It was a big week for the lab, and almost everybody was super busy all week. The arrival of the mew GWAS cohort meant surgeries all week. The surgeries were to insert catheters in the rats, allowing for drugs to be administered intravenously. The way catheters work is that a syringe is attached to the top of it, which goes inside the rat. It is placed on the back and run over its shoulder, into the jugular vein and fed directly to the heart. This allows for rats to feel effects of the drug instantly as it will be immediately pumped around its body. It was very cool to watch the surgeries, as we had made many of the catheters that were used. In addition to the surgeries, they were also dissecting animals from the previous GWAS cohort. This
was done by first, anesthetizing the rats, then poisoning them with carbon dioxide. This allowed for the rats to die with a lack of pain. From there every single organ was removed, from the brain, to the heart, to their reproductive organs. Watching both the surgeries and the dissection was very interesting, both in learning the methods of how rats are studied and utilized and a few things about rat anatomy.
Unfortunately, while most of the lab was busy, us interns were left with little to do because were were not able to perform surgeries and we wanted to stay out of their way other than watching a surgery or two. As such, we spent most of the week doing simpler things, such as labeling caps. However we did get a few chances to work
with rats, as a few rats still needed to be run for an alcohol study, and me and Kevin, another intern, helped Marsida do tail flick tests. This test is used to measure anxiety and discomfort in rats. The test entails putting the tip of rats’ tails in hot water and measuring how long it takes for them to jerk and pull their tail out of the water, lower times signify higher stress. We were taking a baseline for the animals that are going to be treated with oxycodone.
Outside of the lab has been the usual, with occasional trips to the beach and using Claire’s pool. Though, Claire did have a missionary from Ohio stay at the house for a few days. He was very interesting and nice, and his views on religion were far more moderate than Claire’s. This Saturday, however, Claire took us to dinner at the La Jolla Country Club, which was very nice of her. The food there was absolutely delicious and we got a great view of the sunset.
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