Welcome back! This week was a really busy week in the lab. We helped with the GWAS experiments in the mornings as per usual and then we started on to other things. Another lab member is starting a project on alcohol self-administration so I helped reassemble the rats chambers for that on Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday I got to watch and help Molly, Adam and Sierra do dissections which was really cool. So how it worked for Adam and Sierra’s project was, first they administered Oxy into the rats while alive and then waited approximately 20 minutes for the drug to circulate. After the drug circulated well they moved them to the Sac room to be put down and dissected. During the dissection there were a couple different stations. Sierra and another grad student started by putting down the rats in a C02 chamber and then separating the head from the body. After that Sierra passed the head to either Molly or Adam to dissect the brain which was the part they needed for their project. As the brain was being removed Molly gave me a little lesson on the anatomy of the rats brain while she was removing it and showing me the process. She then continued to drop the brain into a chemical with dry ice that is there to freeze and preserve the brain as is. After the brain was frozen she put it into a labeled foil wrap and put it into a cooler with more dry ice. After they finished dissecting all the brains they saved a couple of the rats bodies for another anatomy lesson. Sierra showed us the rats different body parts and organs and after the lesson she let us touch the organs and even do a little cutting and dissecting ourselves.
Then, later in the week I got to watch surgeries on Thursday and Friday with Sharona. These surgeries consisted of putting the catheters into the rats. The catheters are the way the rats receive doses of drug in their chambers. The way this went down: first, they started by putting the rats to sleep; then Sharona was able to begin surgery. She cut through the skin in the lower back to insert the catheter and she also cut through the neck area a little bit to find the jugular vein. Once the catheter was placed in the middle of the back, she took the little piece of tubing that was also connected and put it into the jugular vein which was the hardest part of the surgery. All the surgeries went well except one unfortunately but it all ended up being okay. Rats are incredibly durable and can recover very quickly and efficiently which is great. It was a busy week in the lab this week and we got a lot done.
For extracurriculars this week other then the gym as per usual I went out to the pool a couple times as well as the hot tub here in my apartment. I also went bowling and I went to the mall a couple of times. The best thing was going to watch Spiderman this week at the theaters which was a really good movie. I’ve been hanging out with my roommate named Alex a lot, he’s pretty cool and he has friends that come over and hang too. We’ve been playing basketball at the court here a lot as well as playing video games in his room which is fun. The weather has been great I like it a lot here it’s a beautiful city.
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