Surgeries, Scans, and Coffee Breaks
Sophia D -
Hi everyone! This week was filled with rat surgeries, imaging techniques, and going on adventures to coffee shops near the lab!
On Monday, we dove right into the action with rat surgeries. My lab is currently training a tech to perform myocardial infarctions (MIs) on rats to help us produce an animal model on which we can test novel treatments for MIs. It was really cool to see the structures of the heart, even though rat hearts are much smaller than human hearts. The challenging part of inducing the MI was that because the heart is so small and beats so quickly, accuracy in the procedure can be tricky.
I also learned different imaging techniques this week. I learned about immunofluorescent imaging as well as echocardiograms. For immunofluorescent imaging, cells are stained with fluorescent antibodies that tag different proteins. Then, the cells are put onto a microscope slide and lasers of different wavelengths are sent through the sample. This causes the marked proteins to fluoresce. For example, the DAPI stain binds to the nucleus of cells and fluoresces blue. This technique allows us to identify where different proteins are located within the cell.
Echocardiograms (echos) are an imaging test where an ultrasound is used to image the heart. Echos are used to measure cardiac output, a way to test how well the heart is beating. If the heart has a low cardiac output, then it is not able to pump blood around the body as effectively. While I wasn’t able to watch the echos be performed, I was able to watch my mentor measure the systolic (heart is contracting) and diastolic (heart is relaxing) sizes of the ventricles to estimate a cardiac output.
While I learned a lot in the lab this week, I also got taken on some adventures around campus. My mentors and I trekked to the main UofA campus to get my CatCard (yay!) and took a sushi break. I was also introduced to their go-to cafe near the lab: the Catalyst Cafe.
I can’t wait to learn and explore more in the coming weeks!
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