(no subject)

[exsequar]

So I thought I'd show you guys a bit of what I'm doing at my internship every day. I work with a video microscope so I'm able to capture images of the blood vessels I work with.

So this is a vein that I worked on this morning. It's taken from the intestine of a rat, and this image was taken after it was all cleaned of the fat and everything (that was the skill that I took longest to get a hang of, but I'm a total pro now! \o/)



Then I treated it with increasing doses of the hormone endothelin, which causes it to contract, and it ended up like this:


If anyone's curious about the details, feel free to ask me questions! :)

Comments

[jamesinclair.livejournal.com]

I see what you do, but dont understand why you do it. As in, the vein is cleaned...now what?

[exsequar.livejournal.com]

The "now what" part is the change between the two pictures. I gave it increasing doses of that drug and studied the percent contraction at each concentration. We're studying how veins and arteries differ in their reactions to this drug, and what happens in veins of rats genetically engineered to lack a specific drug receptor on the veins.

[nebulein.livejournal.com]

Do you actually have to seperate the vein from the intestine? And wow. Interesting to see. Is that all you do all day? ^^ (Apart from being online, of course ;))

[exsequar.livejournal.com]

Well see, the intestine is set up differently than you think - with little pins you can pull it out into a circle, and the veins and arteries are like spokes in a wheel, coming out of the intestine and meeting at a ball of fat in the center. So they're all spread out nicely, and each pair of artery and vein is surrounded in a little layer of fat that I have to clear away.

Yep, this is what I do all day! I get two experiments done a day, one vein and one artery ^_^ It's surprisingly time consuming! If I didn't have the internet and my discman, I think I'd go insane :P

[nebulein.livejournal.com]

I see. But you get the intestine all done up already, right? You're not cutting open any rats?

So once you got the vein, how long does it take you between each measurement (cause I'm assuming you treat it with a dose, then wait & measure the vein, or take a photo, or whatever, and then treat it with the next dose or something like that)? Two experiments a day really doesn't sound like a lot. How many are you doing before you get to analyze the results? Are the other people in the lab all working on the same thing? Tell me, tell me, I'm curious ^__^

Ah yes, internet be blessed. I'd be bored to hell in all my free periods and bus rides if I didn't have my ipod. Yay for music. :)

[exsequar.livejournal.com]

(I love your thoughtful Sam icon, hee. Need to get me one of those :) )

I watch them kill and dissect the rats each morning, but no I'm not doing it myself.

Okay so. For each experiment I have to start by washing the vein for 20 minutes with a nutrient solution called Krebs to let it relax. Then I give it 15 mL of KCl, to test if it's alive - if it is, then it will contract. When I see it contract, I wash it again for 20 minutes to get all the KCl off. Then I start the drug doses. There are 8 different concentrations, each with more endothelin than the next. Each dose takes about 5 minutes to go through. The computer is recording a running graph of the diameter, but I write down the diameter at the end of each dose. The experiment itself is about 45 minutes. I have a large chunk of time at the beginning of the day where I set up and then just kinda waste time until they kill the rat, and I usually finish before the day's over, but there really isn't time for a third experiment. With prep, testing, and the drugs, each experiment takes about, oh, 2 hours.

Right now I'm not doing the actual experiments for our study, mostly just getting acquainted with the technique. The rats I need to use are going to be done growing next week, and that's when we'll start. I dont know how much data we'll need, but it's a lot, like several weeks' worth! Here I go! *lol*

There are lots of grad and post-doc students in this lab, and most of them are working on the same area (the intestine, and the blood vessels from there) but doing different things with it.

[nebulein.livejournal.com]

(Hee, I love it as well. I think it was in a big (and beautiful) spn bases batch gsd82 posted in some icon community a while ago.)

How do they get killed?

So the vein can be alive or dead? Is that like the chicken that's flying around the kitchen with its head already chopped off? (I'm really wondering about the name of the nurtient solution. Dunno if you know it, but in German 'Krebs' means cancer.) So you wait until they kill the rat, then do the experiment, clean up, maybe wait for another rat, do the whole stuff again, and wait until you can go home. Sounds like a fun day...
How long do you work each day? And for how much longer? Are you going to come back after the internship? Did you know before what you were going to do? Were you squirmish at all about working with rats or body parts in general? (I'm assuming you probably weren't since you seemed pretty cool about it. I sure know it would take me some time to get used to. ^^)

I see. Is your supervisor back by now? Oh boy, so many questions. I'm sorry, once I get curious it's hard to stop myself, and I realized I really don't know much about what you're doing all day long ^^

[exsequar.livejournal.com]

Questions questions! Whew! *g*

They give them an injection that kills them painlessly. It's basically like falling to sleep for them.

The vein has to be alive - and by alive I mean the cells that cause the contractions have to still be alive. So it remains alive outside of the body for about a day. I use the same intestine twice during the day, so after I'm done with my first experiment I just get the intestine out of the freezer and get the next blood vessel. Krebs I believe was the name of a scientist... we also have part of photosynthesis named after him, the Krebs Cycle. Thats weird about the word in German!

I work about 8 hours a day, depending on the schedule of the people giving me rides. I've just started my 3rd week, and I'm working for 10 weeks total. I'm not sure if I'll be coming back - if he offers me a position again for another summer, I'll have to think about it. I didn't have a concrete idea of what I was going to be doing before I got here, nope. I'm not squeamish at all - I dissected a cat in high school and thought that was the coolest thing EVER. Sometimes I think that I should be disgusted or something when I'm watching them cut up the animals, but I'm just not o.O Well at least I've got that requirement down if I wanna be a scientist!

[nebulein.livejournal.com]

Krebs I believe was the name of a scientist... we also have part of photosynthesis named after him, the Krebs Cycle. Thats weird about the word in German!
"it's what we call ironic"

a cat? oh wow. we dissected a fish once, but i preferred to walk around school and talk to some other kids wo didn't want to stay in the room. (we had open doors day, so kids that were considering going to our school were running around and visiting classes, i think we scared quite some of them away *lol*) couldn't really stand the smell. i never wanted to know what was going on in my body. i'm sure you'll be a great scientist.

and sorry for asking so many holes into you, thanks for answering and explaning everything so patiently. i'll stop now ^^;

[razorbladefaery.livejournal.com]

Thanks for showing an example . . . it's pretty cool to see . . . still more yishy than I could do, but cool . . .
It seems like pretty interesting work . . .

[acostilow.livejournal.com]

Coooooooooool.

*pokes the veins*

[exsequar.livejournal.com]

Hee, isn't it? :D

[novafairy.livejournal.com]

Wow. :)

Thanks for showing this.

(and sorry for this super dumb comment. *hugs*)

[exsequar.livejournal.com]

No problem! And it wasn't a dumb comment, silly thing *smooshes you* I always love comments from you :)

[crystal-lily.livejournal.com]

That really looks intersting. I'm intrigued. :D

[paddle-slut.livejournal.com]

hey anne, this stuff is really cool...ive always liked science, but i never have the stomach for biology *very interested*...i don't think i have any really good questions to ask ya....but ill think of something *grins*