Thursday, April 3, 2008
More surgery
The sutures I made last week on my rats that I thought were dehiscing actually didn't. Well, one of them did partially but the others actually looked pretty good. No infection either. Today I performed the second part of the experiment. It only took me two hours to implant the pumps and catheters in the four rats. Not bad. Most of the rats went under very quickly but one rat just wouldn't give up. I had to inject her three times with ketamine. While they were under, I also injected them with an analog of uridine (a nucleic acid) called BrdU. When cells divide, this compound is taken up during the DNA replication phase (the S-phase). We have antibodies that recognize BrdU and will therefore allow us to get an idea of which cells are dividing. Since BrdU has a short half-life, I will do two more injections tomorrow before I sacrifice the animals and harvest the nerve samples. I am anxious to see the results of this experiment. Our hypothesis is that we will see an increase in phosphorylated Merlin in the nerve section distal to the cut. We also believe that we will see an increase in cell proliferation distal to the cut.
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2 comments:
Does it ever bother you that you sacrifice the rats? Or that you have to use them for the experiements? I hate rats, but I found myself wondering, while reading all your information, if it ever bothers you? I realize that this is for a greater good, but I still wonder if it affects you in any way.
Where did you learn to do surgery? And anesthetize? Impressive, for sure. Did your boss teach you how to do these things?
I hope your experiments work out.
Mom
I do not enjoy sacrificing the rats. It is one of the more distasteful things I have to do. It used to be that you would sacrifice them by cervical dislocation but that was somewhat difficult to do and not always performed correctly by everyone. Now cervical dislocation is not allowed. Our rats must be sacrificed by decapitation. I make sure they are well anesthetized before I sacrifice them.
I have been doing animal surgeries since we lived in Idaho. I very much enjoy the doing surgery. It is challenging and satisfying. The hardest part is getting the anesthesia right. Most of the proceedures I do I have learned from other researchers but sometimes, I have to work out a proceedure on a dead animal. My goal is to minimize pain and the time spent under anesthesia while at the same time maximizing the amount of data I can get.
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