Hi all! Welcome back to my weekly blog post!! A quick recap: I am working at the Dorris Neuroscience Center through the Scripps Research Institute studying metabolism and its effects on our brains. Really cool stuff.
This week I sliced the brains I did the perfusions on last week, and next week I will image them. I also mounted the brain slices onto glass sheets so I can image them in the future. To do this, you use a paintbrush to lift the very thin slices out of the PBC ( a liquid used to keep the brain hydrated and preserved) and then place them onto glass sheets. After this, you apply another type of liquid (part ethanol) to keep the brains preserved and you place another sheet of glass on top of the brains. This part is tricky because you can’t have any air bubbles or else it will come up as an artifact under the microscope. Finally, you use clear nail polish to keep the pieces of glass together. In my lab, people are very resourceful in the products they use to make their processes work.
I also facilitated an entire experiment with the mice. I had them swim for 30 minutes and then I measured their food intake every hour for three hours to document how much they ate after exercise. It was very fascinating.
On Monday, I will help with a weekly lab presentation. I will create some google slides this weekend and present them to the lab Monday morning.
In my free time, I have been hanging out with some family friends who live close by, going to the beach and surfing with them, and getting to know my area a little better. My mom and grandma have come out to visit me this weekend, so I look forward to that.
To finish off, I would like to do my weekly thank you’s. Thank you, Neeraj and my lab for making lab work entertaining and giving me so much hand’s-on experience. Thank you mom for coming down for the weekend, and thank’s to my host family for continuing to be kind. Lots of appreciation here in San Diego.
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