Come Together

It's the end of the first week of classes and Labor Day Weekend. Well deserved. Classes so far have been mostly review. DNA replication in Molecular Cell Biology and the first 3 chapters of Lehninger in Biochem. We don't have an exam until the last week of September, so it will be ton of information, and our exams for both classes are in the same week, for every exam, which is pretty lame.

Rotation has been the complete opposite as far as requiring my brain power. After a brief pow-wow with Pat on Tuesday, she felt that she already knew what I was capable of, especially after seeing my poster at SSR, and that she was comfortable with me finding my own project. She didn't feel like the end point was necessarily that important, since it's only 5 weeks, but that I get to get a feel for the lab and the people. So of course, I had no idea what to do, given all that freedom. After talking with almost everyone in the lab and freaking out a little, Ailene, one of the research associates, brought up a project that one of the recently graduating students was planning to undertake, but never got around to. Long story short, I pitched it to Pat, and she gave me the green light. In the meantime, I have learned:
1) their kill/collection process
2) how to collect tiny TINY mouse oocytes (eggs) (becoming a master of micropipette making in the process)
3) how to fix embryos on slides
4) #2 and #3 require the odd and ancient skill of mouthpipetting.

Simply put, my rotation project will be exposing pregnant female mice to a short-low-dose regimen of BPA (3 day exposure). I will then collect their embryos which should be in their 8-cell blastocyst stage. I will then use fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) to look for aneuploidy where the cells have an abnormal number of chromosomes. The trick to this project is really just getting it done in the 5 weeks I have. I also have to rely on other people to expose the animals since I haven't been trained to that, and the person who does that training just had back surgery--so that won't happen anytime soon. Im excited to work on this, if it works, and there is aneuploidy in the embryos, it will mean that BPA, even at low doses given only for a short period of time, can cause extreme defects if it is during a critical point in pregnancy. It will be a good chance to impress Pat and the rest of the lab. Hopefully I can pull it off.

Last night was a fun get together at a house some second years and a first year live in. I thought it was adorable that it was painted pink. It was a beautiful house, nice front and backyard, granite countertops, and pretty large bedrooms. There was an abundance of food, alcohol, and fun conversation. And Rock Band. Which I am now a fan of. :)

It's also been a whole week with my new little kitten, Mochi. Which no one in Pullman knows how to pronounce, let alone what it is. sigh. Too ethnic I suppose. It's been delightful. She's adorable, extremely entertaining, and very smart as most cats are. She's been handling her time alone surprisingly well. She had a problem with trying to sleep on my face in the middle of the night, and has learned to cozy up just above my head. She also can become overactive between 3-5am, but hasn't done it for awhile, so hopefully she is settling in.


PS-As you can see, the camera made it.