Student Research at Duke

My mice have died yet again soo I still lack samples to do the project I was supposed to do…apparently, the mutation we gave them does not bode well for living very long. Because of this, what I’ll be doing this summer has been slightly modified.

I’ve gotten better at taking pictureson the microscope, so I came in and did that again this morning. We finally figured out what we were doing wrong during TUNEL staining (for apoptosis) and so it finally worked!! That was very exciting because after doing it 3 times, it would be even more annoying to do it yet again.

Today I’m using statistical analysis and some program on the computer to try to detect a difference in epithelial innervation between the control and mutants. Hopefully, it will show something- that would be exciting. I’ll probably also be checking out limbs today as well, which I haven’t done yet. Oh, and I get to run a western blot…something I used to run all the time last summer when I worked in a renal fibrosis lab under Dr. Liu at the University of Pittsburgh, so it should go smoothly.

In other news, I had my first EMT shift on Thursday night and then another 24 hr one over the weekend. I got to play with equipment and the radio and learn lots of building names that I would never, ever go to otherwise that are on campus/near campus. It was fun. Sadly, I still have yet to receive my first call, which is highly disappointing. Whenever it comes, I hope it’s an interesting one.

I’m presenting at our lab meeting on Friday along with Andrew to help us prepare for our chalk talks next week. I still need to figure out exactly how much can realistically be done this summer when my mice keep dying…I’m talking to my mentor about it today and tomorrow. Hopefully we come up with something! Back to getting ready for Friday’s presentation and then to do some more things…

So far, this week in lab has been interesting to say the least. I’m still waiting for living mice…our mice keep dying, which is rather unfortunate. However, I’ve learned more staining techniques. I’ve also played with the microscope as well.

The microscope was frustrating at first because I was asked to take pictures of whisker innervation in mice whisker pads. In the beginning, I couldn’t figure out when I was looking at a whisker, let alone a good whisker that I should be taking a picture of. After a couple hours, though, I got used to it. I’ve surprised myself because I’m actually finding it fun to find them and compare them between the two groups we are looking at (it’s even more exciting realizing that there seems to be a difference between the two as well).

One staining that I’ve been trying to do refuses to work. Yikes. We’re trying for the third time tomorrow…hopefully, it will work then. Other mishaps at work include when I accidentally dropped a pair of tweezers in the trash can, when I accidentally flipped over a slide midway through collecting sampes on the sectioning machine with it (oops), and when I accidentally spilled ice all over the floor. In the last case, my mentor, who was with me, chuckled and taught me the art of sliding the ice gracefully under the ice machine so that no one notices. We’ve also been getting a lot more free food thanks to our lab buying stuff from various companies, so that’s nice, too.

I enjoyed the seminar we attended on metabolic systems. If what we covered is any indication of what is taught in biochem, I think I’m going to enjoy that class. I’m a vegetarian, and it made me realize the importance of taking multivitamins since I don’t consume meat. There are so many things that could possibly go wrong. However, the human body is amazing at its ability to compensate for disruptions of various processes and maintain some sort of homeostasis.