Adventures in Hooterville

I might feel a little bad about that, but I was pretty overwhelmed with my classes last semester. So was everyone I was in classes with, so no one else got much work done in their rotations either. Regardless, I got to learn how to culture neural/mesechymal stem cells, and mouse cells at that. I also got to use a muti-photon confocal microscope on my very own, which is where the learning curve got really steep. Hence why I got only one picture.

This semester, I'm working with the DeWeerth group, and I'm doing electrophysiology experiments with Aplysia californica, a sea slug. My first victim of the semester is pictured to the right. I cut him up, grab his ganglia (little orange balls of nerve cell bodies), pin them down under a microscope, do microdissection to open them up (sometimes in the hopes of finding a particular cell), and then I poke a cell with a glass electrode. The scary electronics below are connected to this electrode. Overall, the system is used to record the electrical activity of the cell and to stimulate (send current into) the cell.

Anyway I did another experiment on Friday and this time I got a cell with tonic activity (constant firing) but that wasn't as impressive because there are lots of those. It still worked ok for my purposes, at least for that experiment.

Annnnd now I have to compile/analyze/understand all my data so I can present it at lab meeting tomorrow night. Sigh. That's the boring part.

I also have a cellular neuro test on thursday and more social drama than I care to think about at the moment, so hopefully you'll all forgive me for putting off updating about Mardi Gras (probably just one more week). I have some fun pictures. Highlights include the Journey float and lots of pink houses. More to come...