Tuesday became one hectic day. I wouldn’t consider it a day with a lot of downtime. I walked in for sat down for five minutes when Derrick assigned me upon an interesting procedure, called DNA extraction. It was learning from repetition once again, and it was pretty simple once you get the gist of it. Centrifuging, washing, immersing, and various other movements were the key parts of the procedure. You need to know which concentration to bathe the DNA first so it could be prepped for PCR, which was the next thing that I did. Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) was performed by Mark and I.
Meanwhile, Mark and Sophia were performing rtPCR (which stands for real-time polymerase chain reaction, which is a rather long phrase iff (if and only if) you think about it). Mark showed that rtPCR actually showed the appearance of certain strands of DNA, which was muy interesante. The rtPCR would actually display a graph via a computer, which would definitely be a logistics equation. A logistics equation is a type of mathematical formula that would display a graph that would gradually increase in slope and then level off at a certain x-coordinate. Where the graph’s slope begins to sharply increase is where there is an early sighting of such items in the rtPCR. All in all, it was very enlightening.
After I performed the PCR for them, I prepared the samples for a gel electrophoresis, for detection of the bands. It took an hour or so, but the samples did not overrun, and we provided some images of the samples via a machine attached to another computer. Most of the equipment in the lab is attached to a computer, strangely.
Moving on…Mark brought me over to the Schroeder lab and we continued to view some slides and began to look effortlessly for some anomalies. Unfortunately, there weren’t any. There was something unusual with the Vimentin antibody though. Unlike the MEKK4 or the Filamin-1, the Vimentin’s activity did not appear on the microscope. The immunohistochemistry may have had a problem with the procedure. Vimentin uses an anti-goat antibody, and I was using a concentration of 10% goat serum to incubate the slides. Maybe the results would change dramatically if I used rabbit or donkey serum. I’m not sure. This was a combination of Mark’s and my input. Maybe redoing and reviewing the this enigmatic procedure as soon as possible may be a capital idea.
Dr. Camenisch said that the only difference between mouse and human hearts is just size. That's all he said. That was rather interesting. He also gave me a crash course on his paper concerning hyaluronan, which is an ingredient within hyaluronic acid, which is a sugar that extends to a million daltons, which was sure to be of interest.
Tomorrow, there is an explant to be performed. Mark’s planning to dissect the mouse and remove the uterus, and then dissect the uterus in pursuit of the embryos. Afterwards, he would try to harvest the embryos and then have them in a collagen culture. All in all, I am deeply interested at the moment, and hope that I’ll be there in time for the procedure. I don't know really. It is possible that he might have to remove the atrioventricular canals from the embryonic hearts. That must require a sort of je ne sais quoi when you're dealing with these things. He has really good, steady hands with the two forceps. It's definitely microsurgery at its worst.
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