Time has truly flown. I am soon entering my last and final week here in sunny California, and to say I’ve learned so much is an understatement. Even now, as I am nearing the end, I am still learning so much from the George Lab at UCSD, which truly shows that everyone learns something new every single day!
Mon. July 7, Day 29-
Right after our great 4th of July weekend, we got right to work this morning, starting with dissections! Today, we did another round of perfusions, meaning we sucked all of the blood out of the rat and took the brains out. Since this was my second dissection, I was able to assist more effectively than I did last time, especially since I had a better understanding of what I was doing this time around. We perfused 16 oxycodone rats today, and plan to do 9 more tomorrow. During dissections, I measured the rat’s body, recorded the measurements, and took notes on any observations made during the dissection. Most of the brains we got out of the rats were perfused great, except for some that came out a little pinker than we’d like, but they were all still great! Today I also got to briefly meet Selene, a pHD student at the lab, who was a mentor to last year’s Pintern. Dissection days are always fun, especially since everyone is there and we get to chat while we wait for the rats to perfuse. Today was also Molly’s first day back from her vacation, so it was nice to see her again at MTF! Of course, Sonja, Elizabeth, Max, and Joseph were at dissections as well, and Natalie also got to make a bit of an appearance too. After dissections, I got to do some computer work, including reading papers and working on my presentation for the lab next Tuesday.
Tues. July 8, Day 30-
Today was quite a productive Tuesday, working straight through from morning to afternoon! It was another day of dissections; however we did a few flash frozen brains today as well! Before going into dissections, though, we had our weekly lab meeting on Zoom. It was fun to walk into the office, after prepping the dissection room with Max, and seeing everyone huddled up together to be present
Lab meeting in MTF
in the Zoom meeting. Everyone was using Sonja’s screen to see the meeting, and seeing this sight only made me love the lab even more. After the meeting, everyone got up and headed for the dissection room. Everyone who was there yesterday was here today as well, and Julie, another undergrad student, was also able to come and help too! A tradition they have in the lab is whenever they do dissections, they like to connect to the speaker and play music. Today, I was chosen to DJ, and I now have a newfound appreciation for DJs. Picking good songs was a little stressful, but we were all vibing and enjoying our time. Well…more or less, with respect for the rats being dissected, of course! Our second day of dissections went a little longer than yesterday’s, I think it was mostly since we were doing a combo meal today, doing both perfusions as well as flash frozen brains. As a refresher, flash frozen brains are taken out straight from the rat- no blood has to be drained out of them. After the rat gets knocked out by the CO2, Molly cuts the head off, as well as the body open to take out some blood, the spleen, and snips off the end of its tail. For some reason, Molly also had to cut off some of the rats’ legs, but none of us knows why. The organs that we take from the rat get delivered to the BioBank, which collects samples from different institutions to distribute them for research. BioBank stuff is out of our hands, so we don’t get that much information on what goes on in that situation. This time in the dissection, I also got to help with tubes, meaning I got to put the organs in their designated tubes, and doing that made me feel like I was genuinely part of the dissection, which was fun for me! After dissections, we had to hit the decks and do some major spring (more like summer!) cleaning. We divided and conquered, cleaning each room in MTF that the George Lab uses, looking for expired items as well as organizing the room. Since research is an important thing for the world to have, inspection is required to make sure the research everyone does is sanitary, clean, and complies with ethics! The George Lab was great at keeping a lot of rooms clean, so our jobs were pretty simple. The cleaning session ended our great day, and I was handed off to be Molly’s sidekick for tomorrow!
Wed. July 9, Day 31-
The rest of this week, I was Molly and Elizabeth’s mentee, a great contrast from being with Sonja these past few days! I arrived bright and early at 7:30 am to MTF to help Molly with the last bits of cleaning before inspection. The last room we had to clean was the GWAS room, which is the biggest room we use. I helped organize a bunch of tubes, cleaned and washed the racks and trays inside the rat testing chambers. After a big morning of cleaning, Molly and I went to scan the next cohort of oxycodone rats for Elizabeth. Now, “scanning rats” might seem easy, but it’s honestly a meticulous job, and you have to get it right, or else everything will be messed up, especially for the rats. This scanning process is just to ensure the rat looks like what it says in the description on paper, and once we confirm that, we make our own George IDS for all those rats. While Molly scanned the rats, I was in charge of making sure the rat was who the rat was, saying what the description of the rat was supposed to be, and making ID cards for all of the rats. The description of the rat was basically what the color of it was, and where holes were punched in the rat’s ears. For example, there are simply brown rats, or some of them are brown hooded, meaning just their head is brown like a hood, and the rest of their body is white. And the holes punched in their ears were either on the left or the right, on top, in the center, or on the bottom. This differentiates the rats in their own cages because some of them look the same. Something I learned from doing scans is that the lightest rat goes first, meaning they get the first new ID, then the darker one, which I thought was interesting. I thought it would’ve been more random, but there’s a system to it all! My morning with Molly ended after we finished scanning, and then I was handed off to Elizabeth. Sonja is the molecular person in the George Lab, while Elizabeth is more of the behavioral person, so I got to learn some behavioral tests and what they do! Today we did Von Frey, which gives the rats a poke in
Full Von Frey set-up
their paw, and keeps pushing harder and harder until the rat has had enough and lifts its paw up. We did this test on 4 groups today, and tomorrow we will do 3 groups. This test seems like it would be easy enough, but that’s if the rat actually wants to cooperate. Since they’re still pretty young, and we’re getting a baseline test, meaning no drug has been given to them yet, they’re still pretty jittery and curious about where they’re at, so they tend to move around a lot, stand up, and do some crazy things. However, for Von Frey, for the attempt to count, there has to be at least 3 paws on the bottom of the platform, and with them being curious, it gets hard to poke them and make them stay in that place for at least 7 seconds. While we did this, Elizabeth and I got to geek out on the different shows we watch, music artists we listen to, and all just getting to know each other. It was fun to talk to someone new, and I’m glad I got to make a deeper connection with Elizabeth before I left!
The Von Frey has a needle, and underneath there’s a mirror to see where the rat’s paw is
Thurs. July 10, Day 32-
Molly Mornings are always so fun to me because Molly is such a vibrant person, she makes everything seem so fun and enjoyable, and it’s so awesome to bring that kind of energy to the lab in the mornings! We started this morning by scanning some more rats; this time, we were scanning the new cohort of cocaine rats, which Molly was in charge of. Since I developed a system yesterday, scanning went a lot smoother than it did yesterday. After scanning, I was tasked to deep clean each of the GWAS chambers we use by first vacuuming out all of the extra bedding that’s inside the actual chamber, and then wiping
Thumbs up in the GWAS room!
all of the chamber down. Cleaning all of the chambers was quite enjoyable, especially since I got to watch Hamilton in the background while cleaning, so it was a great time! I kind of got carried away with my Hamilton sing-along session, so I had to stop 3/4 of the way through my cleaning to go have a lunch break and then help Elizabeth with the second round of Von Frey. Von Frey went a lot faster today since there were only three groups, and I actually knew what I was recording. Writing fast was not a skill I thought I’d need to have, but I think I need to work on my handwriting words per minute! This time, in the Von Frey room, Elizabeth and I got to talk about musicals. She walked in on me cleaning in the GWAS room, and saw Hamilton playing on the TV, so we got to talk about a bunch of theatre as well! She told me my homework for tonight was to watch this musical called Epic: The Musical, which is one about Odysseus. I must say, the musical was really good, and I’ve been playing the music from it on shuffle. So after another day of Von Frey, we finished up, and I headed back to the GWAS room to finish my cleaning. At home, it was my day to cook dinner, and I decided I was going to cook my well-appreciated Bang Bang Salmon bites. I didn’t know I was quite the chef when cooking salmon, but I got the approval from everyone at the house, so that made my day!
Fri. July 11, Day 33-
Upper shelves are oxycodone, bottom two shelves are cocaine
I ended the exciting week with another Molly Morning, and today I got to reorganize all of the drugs they use and put them in the fridge. I didn’t realize that there were so many dosages of cocaine and oxy that the lab used, so going through all of the drug bags was quite a surprise! Molly had me reorganize the drugs by type and by the amount of drug in it. So there was one section for oxycodone and another for cocaine, and each half had its own sections for each drug amount. Doing this made me feel like one of those suburban moms on social media who post their fridge restocking videos! After completing my task, I had one more job to do with the chambers. The trays and racks I cleaned the other day were going back into the chambers since they were now completely dry. Instead of putting bedding, like I normally would in the trays, I was told to put sand instead. Of course, I was watching/listening to music while doing this, and specifically, I was watching the musical recommended to me by Elizabeth. After that, I was handed off to Elizabeth for the beginning of the afternoon. Instead of doing Von Frey today, we did another behavioral test called Tail Immersion. This is where we first, burrito the rat, then stick the tip of the rat’s tail into some warm water, and see how long the tail stays in there before flicking up. Burritoing the rat is quite literally how it sounds- we make the rat into a burrito by wrapping it in a towel. I learned from Elizabeth that when these rats actually get
Tail Immersion set-up
oxycodone put in them, their tail is supposed to stay in longer because oxycodone is a type of pain killer. But, towards the end, after they’ve been put on oxycodone for a while, their tails start to stay in the water for shorter periods because they’ve built up tolerance to the drug. The water we put them in isn’t necessarily hot for humans, 50 degrees Celsius, but rat tails are very sensitive, so their tails don’t want to stay in the water for very long. This test was way quicker compared to Von Frey the last two days, so it was nice to be able to zoom through them. This test, I feel, also doesn’t hurt the rat as much as Von Frey because of how much faster it goes, as well as only doing one round, compared to Von Frey’s three rounds. So once we finished Tail Immersion, my second-to-last week at the George Lab had concluded.
Sat. July 12, Day 34-
The Pinterns and I spent our last Saturday all together doing what we do best- being at the beach. Before the beach, though, Lana, Maiya, and I headed over to Mission Bay to get a little morning run in before we went home to see Shiloh and Azari. They were still sleeping when we came home, but it all worked out because the sun hadn’t come to San Diego yet, so we waited another hour before we went to the beach. This time, we went to Torrey Pines, and it was so beautiful. We did, in fact, have to trek a little bit down a cliff to actually get to the beach, but the waves and the sand were so nice that it was worth it. Since it was our last Saturday in San Diego, we decided it was only fitting if we went out for dinner and dressed up! Lana had mentioned she had never been to Chili’s a couple of weeks ago, so we agreed on going there because she was missing out. After dinner had ended, we headed straight to La Jolla Shores to try and get some nice sunset and beach pictures in, and it was such a fun time!
Sun. July 13, Day 35-
Today was a really chill day, and it was spent just being with the other Pinterns! In the morning, I got to attend another ballet class with the San Diego City Ballet, and it was great! Afterwards, Maiya and Lana picked me up from their little morning run, and we went to this cafe that sold crepes and acai bowls, which were absolutely delicious. When we were done with our food, we went back to our house to clean up a bit and get ourselves situated for the last week. Shiloh and Azari were working in the lab this morning, so shortly after we came home, they also arrived back at the house as well. We were all thinking of things to do in the afternoon and the wonderful idea of getting our nails done came up, so of course we went through with our plans! We also tried to make pho at home for dinner. I don’t think it was necessarily pho, but it was a pretty good creation regardless! While eating dinner we also watched the season finale of Love Island which was really long but I enjoyed every second of it. The festivities of the night concluded our fifth week here in San Diego.
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