Week 6:
Baylor College of Medicine

July 14, 2014

I fed the pigs at 7:30 am, 11:30am, 7:30 pm, and 11:30 pm and played with #20 because he was so cute! We brought the surgical equipment for tomorrow downstairs. In the afternoon, I talked with Rodrigo to come up with a checklist he needed for mRNA and histology.

I talked with Brook in the morning, who was working in Dr. Fiorotto’s lab. He showed me the protocol for H-E staining histology. The embedment in paraffin will be done in the histology department so I will not get to see it. However I will get to process the counts and measurement of the width and length of the villi. I was surprised when Rodrigo said he will use the idea I wrote in my paper about measuring the increase in surface area (I read in another article) and he was able to convince Dr. Teresa and Dr. Fiorotto to do this.

Infusion week!

Today is the first infusion day. We need to take bloods and spin for plasma in each pig for 6 time periods between 2 feeding. After the last feeding, we need to inject “hot” phenylalanine (radioactive) in the pigs and take blood sample at 5, 15, and 30 minute after injecting. We had ten pigs to sacrifice today so we staggered them every 25 minutes.

I thought it would be more hectic but because we had more people and blood sampling is more spread out so it was not bad. I learned how to draw blood and how to handle with tissues what would be used to extract RNA. Hanh showed me how to draw the heparin from blood catheters until “good blood” came out and then collected the good blood. We used a 3-way lock so we can insert the waste-syringe and blood collection syringe. After collecting blood, I flushed catheters with more heparin. We collected longissimus dorsi muscle (LD), jejunum section, and mucosa scraping for RNA extraction. Rodrigo taught me that two key factors in collecting tissue for RNA extract is being sterile and being extremely quick. I used ethanol to clean and then RNAase twice to clean the cutting board, scissors, and forceps.

During the waiting period, Dan and I draw different animals on the cover sheet. We talked and joked around. We took a selfie group picture in our caps and gowns in the animal facility! It was a busy, tiring, but also fun day. We had to sacrifice my favorite pig first because we could not take his blood due to the broken jugular catheter. I was in charge of all RNA tissue collecting today. I did it very quick that my lab manager told me I was even quicker than Rodrigo. However, I think because I had only 5 minute to get ready for the next pig today while Rodrigo had more than 10 minutes between. In the surgery room, for both days, we had Brook and Ryan, the lab technicians in Dr. Fiorotto lab, came over and helped. Brook handled histology while Ryan helping with recording data, e.g. chill time, weight.

Everyone went home early after that because we were all too tired.

Happy Independence Day!

I got to see the first Fourth of July fireworks. Euna and I were waiting in Herman park and we finally saw the fireworks. Later I heard that we could watch the fireworks from our dorm so I was a little bit disappointed. I wished I had stayed home because walking the whole day in Galleria Mall was very tiring. Other than that, I had a fun day with Euna. We shopped for our parents; we tasted different food samples and chocolate samples. We were very full by just tasting the samples!