Hello! My name is Jay Alcazar and my internship is at UCSD. The George lab that I am working in used to be at Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla but they just moved to UCSD recently because they are no longer able to be at Scripps because the building is being demolished. Myself and Danika, the other intern here with me, have started the week off relatively slowly because we’ve had to fill out lots of paperwork.
Like I stated before we are interning at the George lab that’s doing addiction research directed by French scientist Olivier George and his assistant professor and Italian scientist Giordano de Guglielmo. Dr. George has been out all week and Giordano just arrived Thursday from a conference so its been relatively slow in the lab for us. Even if they had been here sooner it would be slow anyways because we’ve had to do lots of paperwork. All the paperwork we’ve been doing is to allow us to touch and handle the rats in the experiments as well as give us badges which give us access to buildings and the elevator to the lab. Its been a relatively slow and long process but we are getting through it quite well especially with the help of the other people in the lab. Everybody in the lab is so helpful and kind and they are all great people excited to share their ideas and research with you and allow you to help them any way you can.
Since we couldn’t do a whole lot because we’re waiting on paperwork we’ve had to do a lot of cleaning and just watching and learning. They have had us clean the rat chambers with them and refill the drug syringes for what’s called the GWAS experiment. They have these cages that allow the rats to self administer drugs from syringes which either contain Oxycodone or Cocaine. The rats that are self administering Cocaine run in the mornings and the Oxy ones at night so we have to clean the cages so they don’t catch each others scent. They first teach the rats to self administer drugs using a lever press which gives them a hit of the drug. Then eventually they learn that one lever means a hit of drugs and another means water and they soon become able to self administer drugs in their chambers for the experiment. Rats are highly intelligent so this process doesn’t take them very long at all.
The lab works these experiments not only with Oxy and Cocaine but with alcohol, alcohol vapor puffs and nicotine as well. On Thursday we had a meeting with Giordano and he explained to us some of his research and the goals of the lab. It was a lot of information but basically a really interesting topic was how he can use what he called Optogenetics to manipulate a small subset of neurons in the brain of a rat. In this case he wanted to manipulate the subset that was responsible for withdrawal symptoms in a rat dependent on alcohol. He starts by injecting a virus which targets and attaches itself to these specific neurons in its brain, then he inserts a fiber optic that shines a light in its brain. The color of the light activates the virus that was previously injected and causes the rat to lose all symptoms of withdrawal and addiction to alcohol. By turning on and off the light with the fiber optic he can also turn on and off the symptoms of the rat.
In my free time I’ve been spending a lot of time in the gym. The housing complex I’m in has a lot to offer they have a gym I can use for free as well as a swimming pool, Basketball court, and bowling alley. The mall is also only a 3 minute walk so I’ve walked there a lot to buy some things and walk around. Fortunately I’m close to everything because I don’t have a car so being within walking distance is great. We also have access to the UCSD facilities including their gym and basketball courts which is really cool.
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