Natalie Lopez Ramirez, Metabolism at the Ye Lab, Week 5

Hi everyone, I am Natalie Lopez Ramirez and this is week 5 of studying metabolism at the Ye Lab at Scripps. 

Glucose strip containers!!

I started Monday with the weekly lab meeting. This meeting was a little different because there was a postdoc that came to be interviewed. During the meeting, she presented her research. She is originally from a cancer research lab and she would like to join the Li Yab because her recent studies have been more focused on neuroscience and she doesn’t have as many resources in the cancer lab. Most of the lab members took turns interviewing her after her presentation. After the meeting I had to go downstairs with Alan and fast the group of mice we were going to test on. In order to fast we have to move the mice into new, clean cages. We can’t just remove the food and call it good, this is because the mice will eat their own poop. After moving the mice we had to wait a few hours until we could start the test. The test we did today was an ITT (insulin tolerance test). This test is very similar to the test we did last Friday, but this time we were monitoring blood glucose levels in response to the insulin injections instead of glucose.

This is one of the mice in the individual cage.

We did another test with the mice on Tuesday. I spent all day helping record data from that test, the mouse temperature, and food weight. In between checking the mice for that test, I helped record data from a long-term test. This test is about 2 weeks long, the mice are at room temperature and are in their own individual cages. All I have to do is measure the food for about 30 cages. This test is held in the big mouse holding room that has hundreds of mice, it’s a nice change of scenery. In the afternoon I encountered a small problem during today’s test. The mice had been put in the fridge that morning after being injected, and at first, most of the mice had normal temperatures. But after lunch, I saw that some of the temps were super low. I found that one of the mice had a temp of 8.5 degrees celsius (47.3 degrees fahrenheit). There were a few othermice that also had a low temp, so I took them out of the fridge and attempted to warm them up. The rest of the test went smoothly though

The sucrose I weighed for the protocol.

On Wednesday I started by reading an article that Alan sent me. The article was all about the new protocol we were going to start. It is a 5-day protocol and the goal is to give a group of mice diabetes. We will be injecting these mice with Streptozotocin (STZ) every day, STZ breaks down pancreatic islet β-cells and causes type 1 diabetes. The first task for the protocol was to make sucrose (sugar) water that the mice will be drinking instead of regular water. After that, I went downstairs to the holding room and measured the same mice. In the afternoon we injected the mice for the protocol. We then had a small meeting with just my mentors and a few other members of the lab that they have been working with. The meeting was about all the tests we have done and the data we have gotten from them, then we discussed what tests we should try next.

The new cages with wheels!!

Thursday was a pretty slow day. I put some cages together and put a group of mice in the fridge for the day’s test. Then I went into the holding room and weighed the mice in the individual cages and their food. Then I waited for a while until starting the protocol. Today was day two of the protocol, we did the same thing that we did yesterday. I made sucrose water and then went downstairs to inject the mice. We had to inject two different groups of mice today. One was the regular group we usually test with and the other was the protocol mice. The test for the day got great results and my mentors were so happy at how it went. While we waited for the next checkpoint Alan and I got the new cages we had been waiting for. These cages had little wheels in them so that we could test how exercise affects metabolism. The cages go in a special room that has a set temperature of 85 degrees. It was a super fun afternoon, so much was going on!

Japanese shaved ice from MNGO!!!!

Friday was such a super busy day. I started as soon as I got to work today. I went downstairs, fasted the protocol mice, and changed their water from sucrose water to regular water. Then I went to the hot room and measure the food intake of the mice in the wheel cages. After that, I went into the holding room and measure all the mice and their food weight. Then I quickly plotted the data from yesterday’s test in excel. Once I was done plotting the data, Alan and I went over the data and made a few graphs. After that, I ate a quick lunch before starting some mice dissections. Today was just practice because next week we will be dissecting a bunch of mice to send off to a company. I’m in charge of getting the muscles out of the thighs. We had our Friday night breakfast for dinner and then went out for a treat! We went to this super popular place called MNGO. After that we went back to the house and watched the first episodes of The Summer I Turned Pretty season 2!

The weekend was super fun. On Saturday we all got up super early and went to the each to take a sunrise dip. We also went to H-Mart and grabbed a bunch of stuff for dinner. On Sunday we went out for breakfast and did some shopping! I can’t believe that was my last weekend and that this will be my last week. I am so excited to see how it ends!