Stephanie Wu | Weeks 5-7 | Recap: Surgeries, Midi Preps, and Food
07.02.17 - 07.22.17
During my 5th week here at UPenn I got the chance to perform my own surgery alongside Felicia. It was both an interesting as well as frustrating experience. Felicia's surgeries revolve around injecting mice with viruses, and I was able to help her inject some mice with a virus I had made myself using the midi prep. The surgery began with taking the designated mice and using an anesthetic so that they don't move during the surgery. I had to insert it into the rig and make sure it's body temperature was being regulated, it's head was stable, and that it's eyes were coated in a special cream to prevent them from drying out or getting dirty as they don't blink during the process. The next step was to cut open the head by cutting and pulling back the skin. Then I have to zero in on bregma, which is a place where the different sutures on the brain meet. I typically mark it and then use the microscope to zero in on it. Next, I have to make sure the head is level, and this part was very frustrating as every time I adjust the leveling, from both directions, I need to re-zero in on bregma. Afterwards, I position the drill on top of the skull, and the coordinates for X and Y that Felicia gave me. I then turned on the drill and went down until the designated Z coordinate. This part was also a bit traumatizing because as soon as I began drilling, a lot of blood began seeping out. Due to the fact that we were targeting the nucleus accumbens, there's a higher chance of hitting a vessel and having a lot of blood come out. After cleaning the blood up, I inserted the injection needle, and wait for the virus to be injected. Since I was performing a unilateral injection, I only did one side of the brain, and after the injection finished, I just sutured (stitched) the skin back together, and placed him into his cage for him to wake up. Overall my mouse recovered well, so I was happy, but am also not looking forward to leveling and drilling again as they proved to be rather frustrating my first time. The rest of the week was spent imaging some more brains and attending a thesis hearing where one of Felicia's friends was presenting to get his PhD.
On one weekend I also went out with Pang and one of the graduate students in her lab. We went to Sabrina's Cafe and had brunch. I got the french toast, and I really liked it!
Another time I went out with Kyuhyun and Felicia to Chinatown and had Chinese food as well as walked around with them and visited some stores.
During my 6th and 7th week, I spent a lot of my time helping Felicia by performing midi preps. After learning how to do it the 5th week, the 6th and 7th weeks I performed two more. The midi prep involves a lot of of pipette work as well as centrifuging and shaking. The whole process in general takes a few days to complete, hence why I spent so much time on it. The process begins with me growing cell cultures on ampicillin plates with LB broth and the designated bacteria. After they grow overnight I come back the next morning to begin the actual process. Using a midi prep kit and the protocol Felicia gave me, I went through the steps which involved a lot of transferring liquids and mixing via centrifuge, removing the supernatant, letting it filter, shaking it overnight, moving it again into eppendorf tubes from falcon tubes, and finish up with centrifuging it and placing it into the freezer. The whole process is a lot of work each time and typically keeps me busy the whole day as the spinning and shaking and filtering all take a lot of time.
Throughout the weeks I also watched Felicia split cells for later experiments she's planning on working on. Because it's bacteria and it can get easily contaminated as well as dangerous, she has to spray everything down with ethonol and wear her lab coat. I also performed another surgery the 7th week, (which went a lot better than my previous one), and genotyped as well as weaned more cages and pups.
I went out with Felicia and Kyu to Pod which is serves Asian cuisine. Philadelphia has special days called dining days from July 13th to July 23rd, and we got to try out a lot of different food from Pod for only a fraction of the actual price or total it would have been. The food there was really good, and I ended up not being able to finish since they gave us so much. But I enjoyed it a lot! Not shown is the dessert because I wasn't able to get a good picture.
On Saturday I went out to dinner with Jerry and Pang and we went to Chinatown and had Korean BBQ. It was all you can eat, and I was completely stuffed by the end of it.
These past few weeks have been pretty busy in the amount of work I've been doing and I've been coming home pretty late, but I feel that I've also learned a lot! The lab has been such a great experience so far I'm dreading leaving next week.
During my 5th week here at UPenn I got the chance to perform my own surgery alongside Felicia. It was both an interesting as well as frustrating experience. Felicia's surgeries revolve around injecting mice with viruses, and I was able to help her inject some mice with a virus I had made myself using the midi prep. The surgery began with taking the designated mice and using an anesthetic so that they don't move during the surgery. I had to insert it into the rig and make sure it's body temperature was being regulated, it's head was stable, and that it's eyes were coated in a special cream to prevent them from drying out or getting dirty as they don't blink during the process. The next step was to cut open the head by cutting and pulling back the skin. Then I have to zero in on bregma, which is a place where the different sutures on the brain meet. I typically mark it and then use the microscope to zero in on it. Next, I have to make sure the head is level, and this part was very frustrating as every time I adjust the leveling, from both directions, I need to re-zero in on bregma. Afterwards, I position the drill on top of the skull, and the coordinates for X and Y that Felicia gave me. I then turned on the drill and went down until the designated Z coordinate. This part was also a bit traumatizing because as soon as I began drilling, a lot of blood began seeping out. Due to the fact that we were targeting the nucleus accumbens, there's a higher chance of hitting a vessel and having a lot of blood come out. After cleaning the blood up, I inserted the injection needle, and wait for the virus to be injected. Since I was performing a unilateral injection, I only did one side of the brain, and after the injection finished, I just sutured (stitched) the skin back together, and placed him into his cage for him to wake up. Overall my mouse recovered well, so I was happy, but am also not looking forward to leveling and drilling again as they proved to be rather frustrating my first time. The rest of the week was spent imaging some more brains and attending a thesis hearing where one of Felicia's friends was presenting to get his PhD.
On one weekend I also went out with Pang and one of the graduate students in her lab. We went to Sabrina's Cafe and had brunch. I got the french toast, and I really liked it!
 |
| (french toast) |
Another time I went out with Kyuhyun and Felicia to Chinatown and had Chinese food as well as walked around with them and visited some stores.
 |
| (Kyu and his bowl of noodles) |
During my 6th and 7th week, I spent a lot of my time helping Felicia by performing midi preps. After learning how to do it the 5th week, the 6th and 7th weeks I performed two more. The midi prep involves a lot of of pipette work as well as centrifuging and shaking. The whole process in general takes a few days to complete, hence why I spent so much time on it. The process begins with me growing cell cultures on ampicillin plates with LB broth and the designated bacteria. After they grow overnight I come back the next morning to begin the actual process. Using a midi prep kit and the protocol Felicia gave me, I went through the steps which involved a lot of transferring liquids and mixing via centrifuge, removing the supernatant, letting it filter, shaking it overnight, moving it again into eppendorf tubes from falcon tubes, and finish up with centrifuging it and placing it into the freezer. The whole process is a lot of work each time and typically keeps me busy the whole day as the spinning and shaking and filtering all take a lot of time.
Throughout the weeks I also watched Felicia split cells for later experiments she's planning on working on. Because it's bacteria and it can get easily contaminated as well as dangerous, she has to spray everything down with ethonol and wear her lab coat. I also performed another surgery the 7th week, (which went a lot better than my previous one), and genotyped as well as weaned more cages and pups.
 |
| (Felicia splitting cells) |
I went out with Felicia and Kyu to Pod which is serves Asian cuisine. Philadelphia has special days called dining days from July 13th to July 23rd, and we got to try out a lot of different food from Pod for only a fraction of the actual price or total it would have been. The food there was really good, and I ended up not being able to finish since they gave us so much. But I enjoyed it a lot! Not shown is the dessert because I wasn't able to get a good picture.
 |
| (1st round: sushi) |
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| (2nd round: appetizers (pork dumplings and chicken lettuce wrap)) |
 |
| (3rd round: main course (new york strip and shrimp pad thai)) |
On Saturday I went out to dinner with Jerry and Pang and we went to Chinatown and had Korean BBQ. It was all you can eat, and I was completely stuffed by the end of it.
 |
| (Korean BBQ!) |
These past few weeks have been pretty busy in the amount of work I've been doing and I've been coming home pretty late, but I feel that I've also learned a lot! The lab has been such a great experience so far I'm dreading leaving next week.
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