We’ve officially come to the end of week 7 of thesis in the lab, over half way through the first semester.

This week I finished generating samples for all my time points (with three biological replicates), extract RNA, and made sets of three cDNA samples out the RNA. I now have a total of 27 cDNA samples, 3 for each biological replicate, giving me plenty of cDNA to run qPCR on 6 target genes and 3 housekeeping genes. I’ll be busy next week working on that.

Thesis is in full swing. We’ve been breeding the zebrafish multiple times a week and dosing embryos frequently. We’ve become a well oiled machine- setting up breeding the night before, pulling dividers in the morning, collecting an hour later, dosing, washing four hours later, and freezing four hours after that. I look at time in a whole new light; it’s no longer 1pm, it’s wash-o’clock. We’re on our way to perfecting our techniques and maximizing out yields.

Last weekend was Parents Weekend at Bates and on Friday there was a summer research poster session. Nabil and I, along with Katie who worked with us this summer, presented on our work from this summer, with new updates from our last few summer trials. The session was very successful and I got to explain our intriguing work to parents, students, and other interested attendees. It was a great practice for me to explain oxidative stress and the experimental design to non-science people.

In other news, the Williams’ lab is now all decked out in Halloween décor!