First Week Reflections
A busy first week, adjusting to Central Campus housing, familiarizing myself with the lab, and attending our first series of seminars. Kudos to Dr. Benfey’s talk on Systems Biology.
Alex Tobler, a grad student at Dr. Nijhout’s lab (she’s also involved with this program), showed me how to dissect the larvae and take out their imaginal wing disks on Monday. She made the task look quick and easy, but after a week of dissecting and preparing the slides, I feel like I’m just getting the gist of it. The wing disks are so delicate that immense care must be taken when handling them. Merely two layers of cells thick, it’s so easy to break them. A cool factoid: the blood/hemolymph of the Manduca larvae is green. Too bad that it turns black in saline solution. The bottom of the dissecting dish is black because of this. Laura, who’s been working with Dr. Nijhout for more than two decades, helps me out here and there. She taught me how to use the fluorescence microscope and I’ve been getting a feel for counting the mitotic divisions in the imaginal disks. Overall, it’s been very educational talking to Dr. Nijhout and the others in the lab and I’m very excited to learn more in the weeks to come.
