Hi everyone, I am Natalie Lopez Ramirez and this is week 3 of studying metabolism at the Ye Lab at Scripps.
Our Lab!!
Monday morning we had our weekly team meeting. An international undergrad intern from the lab, Malcom, presented about the Calcium Dependency of p-PDH Dephosphorylation in Inhibition-Activation Protocol. After the presentation, we gave our updates to Li, the head of the lab. After our team meeting my mentor, Alan, told me about a week-long test with the mice that I could take over. What I’ll be doing is checking on the mice twice a day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon, and seeing how much they eat by weighing their food. The mice that I will be working with went through a very similar test the week prior, however, that test was short-term (only about 6 hours). We didn’t get the results we wanted, so we are going to check if what were are injecting the mice with causes long-term effects instead of short-term ones.
Not a lot happened on Tuesday. I spent most of the day doing video annotations and plotting data in excel. I also checked on the mice.
On Wednesday I watched a seminar on neural circuits for behavioral regulation of homeostasis given by Sung-Yon Kim. It was definitely one of the most interesting seminars I’ve listened to since being here. After the seminar, I helped Alan with his test by making saline and insulin injections and helping him record data. After his test was done I worked on my own test and also did some video annotations and plotted data in excel.
The four brains that I extracted
Thursday was my favorite day of the week. It started with me doing the things I usually do every day. Checking on the mice, video annotations, and entering data into excel. But then in the afternoon, I got to do perfusions and extracted some mice brains. It started with me only doing the perfusion part. I would put the mouse under anesthesia then cut into the body and expose the heart. Once the heart is exposed I cut the right atrium, then I stick a small needle into the left ventricle and pump PBS (saline) into the heart. The saline clears out a lot of the blood from the body, including the brain, which is needed in order to properly image. Then I replace the needle with a different one that will pump PFA into the heart, PFA makes the body stiff, and easier to remove the brain. After perfusing I would cut the head off and pass it to my mentor so that he could remove the brain. After a few mice Alan asked if I was ready to extract the brain as well. I was a little nervous but after the first mouse, I was able to extract the brain easily.
Friday was a lot like Tuesday. I spent most of the day doing video annotations and plotting data in excel.
I spent Friday night and all of Saturday hanging out with the other pinterns. After our Friday night breakfast for dinner, we went out and got grimace shakes. We enjoyed the warm weather and went to the beach for a nice night stroll/swim. Then on Saturday, we spent the majority of the day at the beach just hanging out.
Giada, Lily, and I at the beach!
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