Hey, I’m Evan Strand and I’m interning at the Dorris Neuroscience Lab with Scripps Research. The lab that I’m working with is focusing on how changes in the brain effect the animal’s metabolism.
If you haven’t seen last, I was talking about how I was doing GTTs and ITTs. Turns out, I only did GTTs last week because we did the ITTs this week. These tests take up almost an entire day to do. First, we fast the mice for a couple of hours. Then, we measure the mice’s blood glucose and inject them with either glucose, for GTT, or insulin, for ITT. After that, we just measure the mice’s blood glucose after 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, and finally, 3 hours.
This is the group that one of the mice died last week
Also, during this week I had some time to do more work with the vibratome. I realized now that I haven’t explained much about the process of using the vibratome. First I need to get the brain ready to be sliced in the vibratome. To do that I make a solution out of agrose and ultrapure water. Then, I microwave the solution to dissolve the agrose and cool it down so it doesn’t burn me. Next, I put the brain into the solution and wait for it to solidify into a gel.
While I wait for it solidify, I have to set up to vibratome. To do that, I have to assemble the blade holder(near the center of the picture) that holds a razor sharp blade to slice the brain. Then I put in the boat(black box below the blade holder), where the brain will be sliced. After that, the vibratome is set up and I go back to get the brain that in now in the solid agrose gel. I then cut out the brain into a cube like shown above. Finally, I glue the brain to a tray and secure the tray in the boat and then I’m ready to slice the brain.
Until next week.
There are no comments published yet.