Hi everyone, I am Natalie Lopez Ramirez and this is week 4 of studying metabolism at the Ye Lab at Scripps.
I didn’t go to work on Monday or Tuesday. On Monday the other pinterns and I spent most of the day just hanging out at the house. It was Lily’s last day so we decided to go out and do something fun. We went out and got tacos for dinner and then headed to Mission Bay to watch a firework show. We found a perfect spot to view the show and just enjoyed our last night with Lily. On Tuesday we woke up early and took Lily to the airport to say our goodbyes. Because we woke up so early some of us started feeling a little restless in the house. So, Giada and I decided to go into downtown San Diego for lunch. We didn’t watch a firework show Tuesday night because we were all pretty tired from the long weekend, we did however see some fireworks that someone was setting off right behind our house.
My bench space for the RNA extraction.
A Centrifuge, where I put the tissue samples after washing them
I started Wednesday with a new test. I got the group of mice we usually test on, took their temps, and measured their food. Then I started a new protocol with Alan. We had to extract RNA from 6 tissue samples. It was really cool to learn the process of washing the sample multiple times in order to extract the RNA. It is a very sensitive process and there is a lot of room for error, so we had to work quickly and make sure that there was no way we could contaminate the samples. Then I recorded data from today’s test and did video annotations.
Thursday morning was a bit slow. I spent the majority of it just doing video annotations and plotting data into Excel. After lunch, I got to do perfusions. We got a new grad student in the lab and Alan and I showed him how to perfuse a mouse and extract the brain. Alan trusted me enough to help the new student during his own perfusions. It’s a lot of fun knowing enough about something to help someone else.
I spent Friday morning collecting data from the test that day. It was a shorter test, starting at 9 and ending at 12. After that test, we got a new group of mice and did a diabetes test. We measured their glucose levels every thirty minutes after injecting them with 2-Deoxy-D-glucose. If a mouse’s glucose levels didn’t drop for 3-4 hours after injection then it had diabetes.
Then on Saturday, I went to watch the Padres vs Mets baseball game. The stadium was packed for the game. It was super fun and the Padres won!!
Giada and I at the game!
Natalie, your pinternship sounds like it is going really well with so many fun things outside of work as well. How did you preform the BGL tests on the mice? I can only imagine your tools are much smaller! I can’t wait to read next week’s update.
For the BGL tests, we use the same test strips and glucose meters that would be used for people. We make a little cut to the mouse’s tail and get the blood from there. We don’t need a lot of blood to perform the tests, just a little drop will do.