Well done on sticking with me- if anyone has! I can live in hope…
Today is an awesome day. I’m sure I will look back on it and think how menial today’s accomplishments were but for now I’m going to live in the moment. As I’ve previously discussed I work with fish, but I missed out the part where they GLOW :) I will get back round to that- I promise, but tonight I’m going to keep it brief. I think my fish are possibly the most beautiful things on the planet, of course I do they are my molecular biology babies, however even other people think they’re pretty too. Today I was shown how we are going to use a very powerful microscope to look at how cells that contain my protein move and divide into more cells, in the head of a fish embryo from approximately 12 hours old. This had many steps to get the perfect picture and although I didn’t get a cover shot, I’m starting to understand the process of how to get one.
A key task is getting these baby fish to be in the correct position, without mushing them. At this stage they are about the size of an uncooked piece of couscous (#OverheardInWaitrose) and about the consistency of toothpaste contained within a tiny tissue paper bag- yep pretty mushy. In the wild these fragile embryos are contained within a protective case called the chorion, which they eventually hatch out of much like a chick out of an egg, we have to remove these chorions so we can closely look at the embryo. Anyway I’ve been practicing how to put these embryos into a special type of jelly that gently holds them in place, is translucent so we can see the embryos and still allows the embryo to grow- this is called "Mounting". I still need to polish my embryo-orientation skills, but they are a lot better than they were this morning! I also practiced getting these embryos out of the jelly and cleaning them off so that they can continue to grow up happily to adult fish, this actually went surprisingly well and they are all still happily swimming in their dish now several hours later.
As with anything that involves a computer, the next task is getting it to play ball, today ours was more in the mood for being a bit stubborn, but my supervisor over here fixed it in the end- hurrah! Yes- regardless of complexity the computer specialist will always recommend turning it off and then turning it back on again.
As our prize for bearing with it, we now have a 3-dimensional video of the Scl-containing cells moving in the head of the zebrafish as it develops (grows/matures) over a 4 hour period- IT IS FANTASTIC (to me, at least). We can resolve for the first time exactly how these cells are arranged at this early stage and can even follow individual cells as the move around the head of the fish. Already this has thrown up some interesting questions, that I’m keen to delve into over the coming days.
However students can not live off data alone, so I am off to hunt & gather and get some sleep so I’m ready for what looks to be a good day tomorrow.
On a side note today was actually quite chilly, so some of the clothes I have brought with me might actually be suitable on this trip hurrah! And by chilly I mean 25 degrees Celsius rather than the 32 degrees we had at the beginning of the week, which is just unnecessary really. Also on day three of trying to get a bit fitter, let’s see how long I can resist the multitude of temptations that American bakeries have to offer…
Over and out,
L
rad!
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