First things first, our zebrafish are breeding wonderfully.

While I did set up 13 tanks on Monday, they yielded about 700 embryos, 400 of which have survived. A shortage of embryos shouldn’t be a problem going forward.

After analyzing our results, we’ve found the need to better understand the doses required for antioxidant gene induction. A lot of the trends that I saw concerned the 96 hpf time point, and by trying higher doses at that time point, I’m hopeful we will see induction. This week marks a number of milestones, with our entire lab almost employed as well as the completion of our thesis first drafts. I’ve started on my new experiment of dose response with tBOOH, looking solely at gsr expression. At 96 hpf, the antioxidant system should be relatively well developed, another reason we may see more significant induction at that time point. Nick is much farther along than I am, doing the same experiment with diquat at the 48 hpf time point. He has found significance in some of his results, and I hope to find similar success.

We’ve also begun to plan out our short term, since most of us are working in the lab throughout short term. It’s going to be a busy time, with the majority of us finishing current projects and potentially starting a few new ones. I’m excited to complete my lab work, my thesis, and I can’t wait to see what’s in store for us during short term!