Natalie Lopez Ramirez, Metabolism at the Ye Lab, Week 1

Hi everyone! I am Natalie Lopez Ramirez and I am spending six weeks of this summer interning at the Ye Lab at Scripps in San Diego! I am studying metabolism and neurobiology using mice.

The week started off very informative, Lily and Melaina (two other interns in the same lab as me) and I started our day by sitting in and listening to the weekly team meeting. At this meeting, one of the postdocs, Neeraj Lal, presented the tests he has done and his findings. It was a really interesting presentation, even if I didn’t understand a lot of it. Right after the meeting, we had our first team lunch and then I went straight to work. My mentor, Alan, and I went downstairs to where all the mice are held. We have to put scrubs on every time we go down. Alan taught me how to make injections for the mice, that day we made glucose and saline injections. After injection, we checked both mouse temp and food weight every hour until the end of the day. While I waited to check on the mice I did video annotations. Basically, I watched an hour video of a mouse and had to write down when it started and stopped eating.

On Tuesday we did another test. This time the mice were put in the fridge, we had the same two injections as Monday and checked temp and weight every hour after the injection. We check on the mice every hour and collect the data to see how the injections and other conditions change their temperatures and/or how much they eat. We also started habituating a new group of mice. We made new cages and left the mice in their own cage for a few hours to get them used to it. This prepares them for testing. I also put the data we collected on Monday into excel.

Wednesday we started by habituating the mice again. Then, Alan showed me how to do a mouse perfusion. I got to see him dissect a mouse then pump some fluids into the mouse by sticking a needle in the heart to prepare for extracting the brain. It was super cool. After the perfusions, we prepared three brains for the vibratome, a machine that cuts the brain into super thin slices. We had to wait about an hour before the brains were ready so I spent my time entering some more data into excel. Once the brains were ready Alan showed me how to operate the machine and I was able to slice a brain!

Thursday was more of a chill day. Alan had to leave for a little bit so I was left to check the mouse temp and food weight until lunch. I then did some more video annotations until he got back. Once he did we re-prepared two of the brains that we didn’t get to slice the day before. Alan trusted me to handle the vibratome on my own. We used the brains we sliced and looked at them through the microscope. We were able to look at the specific region that Alan and Neeraj are focused on.
In my free time I have hung out with my roommates, Giada, Lily, and Melaina, who are all also pinterns. We had a movie night and went to the beach multiple times. I am so excited for the upcoming week!