Peddie EXP Summer 2018

Despite being my last week, it was a rather busy week of a lot of different things. Kyu, my postdoc, had a lab meeting on Wednesday, and he wanted to include what I did over the summer. So, following the analysis of the brain slices, I gathered all the data and made some neat graphs to summarize all the histological work I did. I was in a bit of awe when I saw that so much work could be summarized in 2 small graphs. At the same time, it added a lot of closure and gave me a sense of accomplishment, but I digress. Regarding the code I wrote up, I continued to tweak it, annotate it, and even made 2 other versions that slightly differed in its use. For all of these, I wrote up a protocol so that the lab could use it when I’m gone L . Kyu, hoping to make my last week memorable, asked me what I wanted to do. I responded with “perfusions” (albeit how gorey, it’s really interesting). Little did I know, he had to perfuse all the mice he had been running behavior on for the past mon...

(Disclaimer: this is a little random, but I wanted to put some of my thoughts down on paper (or computer I guess)) Dinosaurs. Their mysterious awe, their primordial existence, their electric lure. I was enchanted by them--almost mythical creatures--throughout my early childhood. The Allosaurus and Brachiosaurus replaced my quintessential girl fascination for dolls. The concept of what had existed before man striked me in a manner brushing Barbie’s hair never could. By kindergarten, I had the narration for dinosaur documentaries memorized, and in first grade I proudly presented my ostentatious collection of fossils to my class in “Show and Tell”...each week (my snowglobe collection didn’t draw as much interest). I spent my afternoons sifting through the forest floor for the imprint of an ancient plant on the face of a stone, deer bones, and arrowheads. This was my gateway to science. I wanted evidence of the past, but even more so, I craved discovery. Too naive to comprehend th...

Week 6 and 7 These two weeks were really busy. Sarah - an undergraduate - and I continued on the IHC project and I perfused 3 more mice so we could do IHC on them. I’m getting better and better at perfusions (and more desensitized to the gore). Though, I always remember to say a little prayer for the mice before I cut it open and thank it for its scientific contribution. Hopefully they are all doing fine in mice heaven. Because mice brains are sliced and sectioned off into 6 wells, we were able to perform IHC on 6 batches of brain slices, 2 from each mice, (the other 4 batches are preserved and saved in case they need to be used in the future). Of these two batches, one was stained for the somatostatin receptor, and the other one was stained for the parvalbumin receptor. After IHC, we mounted the slices and then viewed them under a microscope. Unfortunately, the slices were a little beat up, but overall the entire staining went well. During this process, I continued on my sem...