Duke University | Howard Hughes Undergraduate Program

The first week of Howard Hughes i got bit by a mouse. The bite mark has dissappeared, but the memories from the program will stay with me forever. That sounds so cheesy...i know...but i seriously dreamed about cleaning up mice poop after a holeboard test friday night and i've taken to using the word LEGIT way more than i used to...which was never.

What I loved about Howard Hughes was that it provided the opportunity for me to fully immerse myself in the research culture. It was such an authentic experience. The best part was becoming a member of my lab. At the poster session, one of the postdocs told me that he thought the lab atmosphere would be very different without me and Lavender around. I thought that was pretty cool =). That same postdoc also told me to blog about stuff i learned so here it is... I learned how important communication is in science. I got to witness it first hand between my mentor and PI who by the way are both awesome. If you're reading this as someone going into Howard Hughes and are ever assigned Dr. William Wetsel and Dr. Ramona Rodriguiz, i promise you that you will have the best time ever. There is really no good way to thank them enough. I learned more about parts of the brain, different neurotransmitters, mice, recreational drugs, PPI, and signal transduction pathways than i ever thought i would. I learned that there is such a broad range of things you can do with science and i've decided not to limit myself to one particular field just yet. Thanks to all the morning speakers for keeping me awake in the morning and letting us get a glimpse at your passion for science. I will keep on exploring the endless possiblities that are out there.

As for the rest of the summer....i won't be waking up at 7:30 anymore. I won't be passing bikers on erwin road anymore. I won't be taking random paths to get to the bryan center anymore. Instead, i'm going to be chilling at home, getting ready for everything exciting and stressful that comes with being a senior. I really don't know what's in store for me in the future...aside from something science related...and some  DHOOM MACHALE of course (does that even make any sense?), but i believe that one day it will all become clear to me....maybe in a dream? i'm excited to find out.

Finally, to all you fellow howard hughesers....keep in touch. i loved meeting every single of you. visit the thrill more often. =) to Dr. Wahl, Kriti, Chris, and Tanya....thankyou. you guys were awesome. And to anyone who's considering applying to the program...what are you considering? JUST DO IT. 

peacelovenandhappiness,

nancy.

you're playing tennis and see a dark brown leaf with a super long stem and think it's a mouse.

you forget that when most people say "my mouse" they mean their computer mouse.

you try to make a cat out of styrafoam stickers, but it comes out looking like a mouse.

your mom says your car smells like mouse but you don't smell anything.

while volunteering at a kids museum, a little girl says you look like a mouse and should therefore eat all 6 pieces of the fake cheese.

you begin to question if any of your friends are schizophrenic.

When someone says they go to DA...as in Durham Academy...you think they're talking about Dopamine.

you receive a box of S'mores Poptarts from the mice in your lab. best surprise ever.

<3

this week we're supposed to blog about the 'joys and woes' of research. Since i'm the type of person who always saves the best for last, let's start out with the "woes".

things that can go wrong in a mouse lab:

1. the fire alarm goes off...and the mice have to sit through the entire thing making them unsuitable for experiments for a couple hours to an entire day (this has happened 3 times already)
2. running out of control substances that are necessary to create the pharmacological model of schizophrenia
3. the light going out in the open field room making the conditions unsuitable for open field testing
4. doors not fitting for the CAR test and the company refusing to give us a new doors so we can start the test when planned 
5. getting bit by a mouse, but i guess i'll always remember my stay in the mouse lab
6. mouse pee/poop
7. the autoclave steam coming out, setting off the fire alarms, and releasing a smell of fried poop. the smell was the worst part.
8. mice who are unidentifiable via their ear marks or the much more diffcult toe marks.
9. dead mice =( although...it's a natural process i guess
10.  reading tons of papers and getting increasingly more confused with each one

things that can go amazing in a mouse lab:

1. the feeling of being involved in something big...like the NIH grant
2. meeting important people in the field like marc caron and then seeing them referenced in the papers you read
3. munching on m&ms from the vending machine and observing /experiencing the dynamic of a core facility
4. learning about and watching the many different things other people in the lab do such as microdialysis and SPLC
5. "handling" fat, friendly mice
6. reading papers and understanding them
7. getting LEGIT data that show the antipsychotics are restoring PPI
8. talking to mice... in a non-schizophrenic way of course =)
9. running PPI all by ourselves...and getting LEGIT data
10. talking to Dr. Wetsel and hearing about how essential behavioral science is to the medical field

although the OCD in me chose to make the two lists even, i must say the magnitude of the JOYS far outshines any of the woes.

toodles. HAVE A NICE WEEKEND!

i can't write about the "typical" day in the lab because our days are far from typical. We don't follow a set schedule from day to day we just kind of DO stuff. There are lags in activity when we just chill and times when we are extremely busy, kept on a strict time schedule. So...i'll describe some of the things that go on in the lab.

PPI: it's basically our project (i've talked about it in every single blog post...). This is what we spend the majority of our lab time doing. Since we can't inject the mice, our mentor or Caroline does and we put the mice into the little tubes. It's an art...some are really squirmish and refuse to go in while other will pop in and then scramble back out. They all look like Remy from Ratatouille. Then, we allow the machine to run the test and after 20ish minutes, take the mice out and clean up after them. There's this amazing sterilizing spray we use... that just makes the poop go away and life so much easier.

Hole board: the most exciting part of this week was performing this NEW test. well...new for me. basically there's a board with 16 holes and a computer and video camera track how many times the mice poke their nose into the holes. Mice are curious creatures! Some mice even fall into the holes and explore what's under the board. it's always neat to see them figure out how to climb up from underneath.

MAKING DRUGS: PCP and Amphetamine are on lockdown. It takes a lot of calculations and makes me wish i took AP chemistry so i could understand them better. The other day, Caroline (the gradish student) was having issues dissolving one of the antipsychotics into solution. Vortexing at a speed 10 is crazy intense. everyone should try it.

Life as a lab tech: Last week, our lab tech, Santu, was out and we got to fill in for her. She checks up on and takes very good care of the mice. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM...there's like 2 entire rooms full of racks of mice cages as well as cages scattered around in individual testing rooms. We had to open each cage and check the water/food level as well as the cleanliness of the bedding. The one rack of mice i checked must have been the maternity ward because there were tons of cute little babies. newborn mice are pink and furless...

we have to get dressed up pretty in order to see the mice.

The AUTOCLAVE: is huge. and there's someone on the other side of it that sings. it also rumbles a lot and so oftern that i've become habituated to it. when it's finished it BEEPS a lot. just as the sound of the autoclave is a constant in our lab, so is the sight of these boxes:

mice are everywhere

Gloves: we use a lot.

Kind of like pipette tips of a wet lab

Chill time: This is what happens when we're either waiting for a test to run or are waiting for a drug to be made or a test to be prepared or a program to download.... I read papers: papers about schizophrenia, which are easiest to understand, and about dopamine and glutamate receptors, which are a lot more techinical. Wikipedia is a big help. I also take breaks and read for a while, imagine my surprise when he book i'm reading right now: Identical by Ellen Hopkins mentioned schizophrenia! Chill time is also ipod time and ponder about my future time. It's nice that i'm in the same lab as Lavender, which means we can chit chat with Caroline and argue about whether or not this-->

is Korean or Japanese sushi and the effect of testosterone on one's body. =)

it's been four weeks...i can't believe that the howard hughes experience is almost over. it's been great. i've gotten so used to my lab that i don't even notice the smell anymore. when leighanne came to visit, she said the entire lab smelled like an incubator. you can read her blog to find out what she thinks about that smell. next week we get our official badges and start a new type of experiment. HOORAY. have a nice weekend everyone.

My lab works on a ton of different projects that all involve behavioral tests with mice. The past couple of weeks, we've been wrapped up in working on getting data for a NIH grant to study the behavioral effects of certain antipsychotics and discover their signal transduction pathways using schizophrenia mice models.

The behavioral test i worked with was the PPI (Prepulse Inhibition test). I've already started explaining what PPI is in my first blog post. Basically, you compare the startle response to an auditory stimulus with and without a stimulus before...the prepulse. Usually, the startle response is lower if a prepulse precedes the actual stimulus. Schizophrenics typically exhibit deficient PPI....their startle response is unaffected by a prepulse. PPI is a way to test pre-attention in a lab setting. Individuals with defiicient PPI have difficulty filtering out unnecessary information in their surroundings...one of the symptoms of schizophrenia. It's particularly useful to use PPI to study antipsychotics because drugs that can restore deficient PPI to normal PPI could potentialy be effective schizphrenia drugs.

To perform the test, we used a San Diego Instruments startle response system.

They look like small refrigerators for the mice to chill out in. It's in here that the mice hear the auditory stimulus and the platform they are standing on has a high-tech sensor that can measure the amount of startle. Almost everything is run by a computer, which makes it a simple enough test to perform. We tested for PPI in both postive and negative control groups...some received the vehicle (water) while others received typical and atypical antipsychotics that are commonly prescribed in schizophrenice patients. The data was eventually compiled in a bar graph and we cheered when the postive control antipsychotic did what it was supposed to do....restore the PPI of the pharmacological schizophrenia models and asked quizzical questions when unexpected things came up.

PPI is only one of the many mouse behavioral tests that my lab has the capability and technology to perform. For the rest of the program, i will be working a little bit more with PPI, but also learning how to work some of the different tests. It's not really a research project, more like an exposure to many different things, which i think is so much better. I'll be sure to keep everyone updated!

i plan on finding out what this machine does sometime.

Random ramblings: Going back the NIH grant, the past 3 weeks have gotten me acquainted with the atmosphere of a lab under a deadline...extremely hectic at times. Here's a cause for celebration...we're completely moved out from the CARL building and i am a pro at pushing carts around campus. I also really enjoy the five o'clock church bell concert everyday.

Finally, i think andy roddick deserves a shoutout for his wimbledon performance. =)