Masa, Entry#4, Trainees

Its been business as usual here for me at the lab. This coming week will be the final few days I have here. With a couple of new volunteers arriving to take my place for the remainder of the summer, I have been teaching them some of the skills that I have learned in microdrive assembly and data sorting and cleanup. It brought back memories of the frustrations and difficulties I had in the first couple days, as well as gave me a renewed appreciation for the lab members who took the time to teach me the necessary skills early on. 

Another volunteer who started with me is also about of leave, nearing the completion of her project to create a digital map of the mouse brain, complete with pictures of the lab. I actually did not know the scope of her project until a few days ago, when she came in with professional photography equipment to take pictures of the experiments. 

This last week, the other volunteers and I also got the experience of watching an imaging session using a confocal microscope, a device that magnifies the stained brain slices significantly more than a conventional microscope can. I couldn't take any clear pictures because the room was very dark, but the machine was positioned using a joystick connected to a computer and took images in sliced layers. The entire session took a couple hours, but a lot of the time was spent waiting for the higher resolution pictures to be taken. The resulting images were very similar to the ones in their papers and posters, with the Alzheimer's disease inducing tau and amyloid beta proteins clearly marked out. 

Finally on Wednesday Dr. Peretz paid me a visit and took a bunch of us NYC based EXP students out for lunch. At my lab, Dr. Hussaini gave us both a quick tour of the facilities and the mice, while I gave her a quick rundown of how I make the drives. It was also great catching up with her and the other students, as well as sharing our unique experiences in our respective labs. As my time here draws to a conclusion soon, I will endeavor to appreciate every day at work next week, and intend to learn as much as I can in the short time I have left.