My first week at the Arizona Biomedical Collaborative at the Translational Neurotrauma Lab can be wholesomely described as an entirely new and alien experience.
Before joining the research efforts at the ABC, I had a very preconceived notion about the nature of the research. I thought that the professor controls everything within the lab and dictates every responsibility to high school interns out of a sense of untrustworthiness. Also, I thought that to pursue research was to throw yourself into the fire immediately with some training and you proceeded under the watchful eye of the professors and lab interns.
All of these notions were proven a mix of truths and untruths.
Anyways, here is a brief overview of what I accomplished this week.
On Monday, I learned all about the materials needed to properly run the Wes machine, a tool that simulates a western blot and cuts the run time down from two days to three hours, and where they were all stored, which is important information to consider for experiments.
Due to my supervisor being extremely busy on Tuesday, I was exempt from going to the lab as she would not be there to guide me.
On Wednesday, I ran a sham plate for the samples from the VPM region of the brain for Sprague Dawley rats to ascertain which samples would be appropriate to run with the injured samples. Sham is the term used to refer to uninjured rats, and the VPM is one of the regions of the brain that we are looking at.
On Thursday, I participated in a lab meeting with all the personnel in the lab. There, we discussed specific projects that other lab personnel were pursuing as well as addressing problems and solutions to many issues in the lab. Afterwards, we watched a presentation on a study on the reduction of aggression in mice after the addition of a corrugated plastic cage divider, where it was ascertained that a cage divider heavily affected aggression levels in mice in a positive manner. Then, lab personnel offered other avenues to pursue as well as improvements to make on the experiment. After the lab meeting, my advisor then again extensively reviewed the steps needed to run the Wes machine again and I wrote the steps in my lab notebook.
On Friday, I began creating WES plates for the actual study that I am helping in. It took me three hours to gather all of the materials and fill the plate due to unforeseen problems, but I was still able to run two plates in the end.
Woah!!!! This is so cool! I'm happy to hear that you are enjoying your time at ABC. Doing research with the mice sounds like a blast! Do you mostly operate the machinery and conduct the tests or are you also part of the team that interprets the results?
ReplyDeleteSounds like you had an informative first week! I remember Western blot as a means to identify disease - are you looking for diseased brain tissue in injured mice? Also, what were the issues that kept you from gathering lab materials? It seems like labs can never be without their complications! :)
ReplyDeleteSounds very interesting! I'm intrigued to hear more about what you learn about the research process as you move along! Is there a particular reason you are looking specifically at the VPN region? Could you explain more about the cage dividers/their relevancy to your particular field?
ReplyDeleteI hope you're enjoying this very unique opportunity to work in the lab! Can you describe the mechanics behind the WES machine? And how does this research apply to the grand scheme of things?
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