Peddie EXP Summer 2018

With only one week left in the lab, Anna and I are rushing to collect as much data as we can before I leave. After spending basically all of July staining and imaging, we can finally devote some time to quantifying those images. Fortunately, we can pull a lot of data from the images we've collected through a program called Imaris. Unfortunately, some of that data must be collected by hand counting. For example, in order to determine the total number of sensory terminals and how many GABApres are on each sensory terminal, we must go through the Z-stack on the computer and quite literally count how many blue dots there are and how many yellow dots are on each blue dot. Sounds fun, doesn't it? The best part is that each image takes an average of 3 hours to quantify and we have 18 images to do!! So much fun!! But in all seriousness, the data analysis portion of this project is actually quite interesting, for comparing one simple thing, like the difference in size of the sensory ter...

Thank god I chose to stay here for 9 weeks because 6 weeks is honestly not enough! Even with antibody staining after antibody staining and 4 hour sessions on the confocal microscope, only now are we finally starting to collect usable data. As I've learned from my past month here, most of lab is troubleshooting, figuring out what to do next when (because it will) something goes wrong. I've realized that in order to be a successful scientist, you must stay optimistic and open-minded. If you are the kind of person that gives up the second something goes wrong, you'll walk in and walk out of the lab in less than 10 minutes. But even with an open and optimistic mindset, it can get extremely frustrating at times. Just last week, Anna and I were trying to learn how to use a program called Imaris to quantify the images we got after spending the whole week harvesting the tissue, sectioning it and staining it - a process that takes the whole week. Then, once we're sitting in fron...

By the end of four weeks, I finally feel a little more comfortable in my lab. Even though everyone was incredibly welcoming and inclusive since the first day, it took me a while personally to be able to relax and offer help when I have nothing to do. I have essentially gone through the whole process of how we collect data in lab including everything from dissection to confocal imaging. My mentor, Anna, was not here this week because she went home for the holiday. As a result, in addition to working on my project, I was able to learn a little more about what everyone else in the lab is doing. Even though Anna and I work with the central nervous system, investigating the spinal cord and cerebellum, most of the lab is involved in the enteric nervous system, investigating small intestine and colon tissue. I was able to observe, learn more about and even dissect some gut tissue from our mice (it's not as gross as you think, or at least it wasn't to me). The biggest adjustment I ha...