Peddie EXP Summer 2018

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...

The past two weeks at the MOI have been packed full of 12 hour days due to the influx of rat and canine models from the vet school. The vet school students practiced their necropsy techniques and sent over 8 rat models at the beginning of week 6 and 3 canine tails on week 7. With the arrival of these new rat models and canine tissues, I had to harvest all of the available tail IVDs, place them in the flexcell plates and vacuum system, culture them under load for 6 days each, and perform media changes and the end-of-culture procedure. The lab also had an MOI organized study day this week in which I was one of the first five people in the world to evaluate a successful ACL to ACL allograft! I received the 8 rat tail models on Monday of Week 6 and immediately started the harvesting procedure. All of the harvesting procedures for IVDs have to be performed sterilely, so I had to lay sterile mats in the hood, gather all the necessary sterile equipment, and use sterile gloves. I used a sc...