Yay! Finally, it's over. After sitting out and training for about three additional days, I'm ready for action here at the lab. Dr. Camenisch hasn't come by. He's really okay. He just likes to give his graduate students a hard time. He's just trying to humor us so our morale doesn't go down the tubes. Morale is very important in the lab, because it keeps the grad students from rebelling, I guess. They're a pretty tight pack, but they're still willing to welcome the various personnel that enter their realm.
Currently, what I've been working on is extracting the fetuses of the mothers and then removing the hearts of the fetuses. It's pretty interesting. They first open the mouse's abdomen with scissors and forceps. They they remove the uterus (which can be defined by bulges due to the movement of the embryos). Afterwards, they dissect the uterus and extract what fetuses are found, and then transfer the embryo. To explant the hearts, they just utilize two forceps and then place the organs in collagen gels, specifically an m199 medium.
Mark and I performed DNA purification, just to clean some of cut up DNA samples. We put in about 250 microliters of water to increase volume, then 150 mics of sodium acetate, and then 900 mics of 100% ethanol. We then placed it in a -60 C freezer for 10 minutes. It's not the warmest place, I'll admit. Afterwards, we centrifuged the cold solution at 13,000 rpms for 15 minutes. Then we removed the supernatant and then add 500 mics of 70% ethanol, then centrifuged it again for 10 minutes at the same speed. And then I dried it for fifteen minutes, and then reconstituted it with 30 mics of sterile water.
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