This is actually old data, but I am showing it to illustrate that my MRI reporter gene I have been working on is ready to go in vivo. Sigh its also a .tiff and I’m too tired to change it tonight. I put the reporter in a retrovirus and injected it into the brains of developing mice I just started my first imaging run on these brains. By tomorrow I will have some idea as to whether this is going to work or not. If that is the case then I will be doing very well and I will definitely have something to brag about at the upcoming ISMRM conference in Berlin in May.
The pendulum of mental ability swings back towards science for a while. That’s how things work for me. I just wish I could make the transition more freely. All art projects are brutally dropped for my big breakthough, but I can’t just not show up to the lab on days when I’m not feeling it. Someday futureBen someday.
posted by futureBen at 9:51 pm
I have begun experimenting on animals. I didn’t plan on things working out like this, they just did. If I want to manipulate genes I have to use a model organism. Mice seem to be the most relevant and so…
To work with animals you have to be detached, calculating and, most importantly, merciless. I am none of these things, and so I am not very good at animal work. I can barely pick up the little creatures and yet I am going to have to do surgery on them. Lots of surgery.
Mostly I am just watching my advisor carve up mice and inject my viral particles into their embryos, but I am going to have to figure this out eventually. Today I sutured a dead mouse and practiced loading up needles. I felt a horror movie antagonist. Stitching up a dead animal filling tiny glass needles all for some senseless purpose no normal human mind could interpret. I may start opening up pregnant mice, imaging them and then stitching them back up again just to practice. Sacraficing mice for practice! Is this who I am? Apparently so.
posted by futureBen at 11:52 am