Oliver Crane, Post #5, Last Week

My final week at UCLA was busier than all the previous weeks combined. Dr. Walwyn is trying to publish one of the lab's projects as soon as possible so everyone was working overtime. Most days I would stay till 6 or 7 pm to finish all the work I had to do which was a wide range of things. When I would arrive in the morning I would feed all the mice then make more food which involved crushing the regular mouse food with a hammer and blending fish oil pills into it (which made me and the entire room smell like a fish factory). Normally in previous weeks I would then go and do some work labeling brains on the computer, however Dr. Walwyn asked me to help prepare a few sets of brains, which have been recently sliced, for viewing under a microscope. This is truly a painstaking task as each brain has hundreds of thin slices in little wells which must all first be filled with PBS (a buffer that prevents them from drying out). Then the PBS must be removed from each well using a pipette and replaced with Triton (a mixture that contains a sort of soap and is used to clean the brain slices). After 10 minutes of leaving the plate on a shaker to mix, the Triton must be removed and then more Triton must be added again. This step is repeated many times along with other mixtures being added to the brain slices. The brain slices are then left overnight in a special solution which must be removed and then replaced with other solutions the next day. Anyways, this multi-day process involves pipetting thousands of times but finally prepares the brain slices to be moved onto a microscope slide.

An example of the well plates which are filled with brain slices in each well.

Once the brain slices are ready they must each be moved very carefully with a sort of tweezers onto a microscope slide. This roughly takes a few hours per well plate because of how fragile the slices are and must be completed in a dark room due to the slices being light-sensitive. Nevertheless, it felt really good to be able to see all the brain slices I had prepared by my last day at UCLA. On Friday, my PI took me and the new lab manager to lunch which was a lot of fun. I found out that the lab manager is actually applying to medical school in the fall which was cool. Back at our house, we all started packing up our things and cleaning everything which also was quite a task. I learned so much from my 6 weeks at UCLA in Dr. Walwyn's lab. Before this experience I really did not properly appreciate all the grunt work that goes into these massive publications. It really does take a village to put research grade papers together. Looking towards the future, I still have to write up a report of the history of drug advertising in the United States for Dr. Walwyn which should take a good amount of research. It's been a great summer and really amazing learning experience.