This week, I continued the procedures that I have been following the past few weeks.
My samples have been working, which means that I have been able to genotype more of the unknown DNA. So far there has been a good mixture of mutant and wild type DNA. Although I have been conducting these same procedures for some time now, there are still many samples left to go through.
Today, I went into the lab a little bit early to work with the zebra fish. Another intern and I met on the fourth floor of TGen and went ahead to practice one more time on the microinjections.
The steps for working with zebra fish are as follows!
1) A breeding pair tank should have been made the night before so the first thing I will do is remove the barrier between the male and female fish.
2) While the fish are nesting, the other intern and I prepared the other materials. Since we were just practicing, we were only going to inject a dye with water into the fish eggs. Once this was prepared, we uploaded 1.5 microliters into a needle and attached the needle to an injection. The needle is very very thin so we had to be careful with handling it.
3) We checked on the fish to see if there were eggs on the bottom of the tank. Since there were, we collected those eggs and put them in a gel petri dish.
4) In this step, we had to orient the eggs so that the cell was lying on the left side.
5) Once all of this was ready to go, we injected the egg with the dye. It looked like this.
The only difference is we injected our dye into the yolk, which is the dark puffy grey area on the left side of the cell.
I'm really happy I was able to practice the injections today so I can actually start the microinjections soon. Although this doesn't have much to do with my senior research project, I am happy to help the lab in whichever way possible.
I can't wait to hear how everyone else's weeks went.
Talk to you soon!
Pooja
Awesome week! You are such a helper, and I know that the lab appreciates you!
ReplyDeleteSounds like you passed your zebra fish training? Was this your first time working with them? Why are zebra fish eggs specifically chosen for these types of experiments? Do they have special properties?
Hi Pooja! Sounds like a cool week! I am curious, how do you distinguish between the male and female zebrafish?
ReplyDeleteWow that is so cool, looks just like an lab that Mr. Nishan would have us do.
ReplyDeleteWow very interesting! What is the specific purpose of such micro-injections?
ReplyDelete