My day in the lab I must say varies a lot day to day. Most weeks we perform several Glucose tolerance tests with our mice, so the morning is spent fasting them and getting prepped for the GTT. This involves me making our glucose that we inject either intraperitoneally or with an oral gavage. After this I label tubes that we use to collect blood samples from. Then we usually have lunch and then go to the mice house later that afternoon to complete our GTT. Then finally after that I take our samples back to the lab, centrifuge them and pipette out plasma to store in our -80 C freezers.
If we aren’t performing GTT’s that day we’re usually, removing islets, and using the Perfiusion Machine to test our islets! The Perfiusion Machine lets us take our islets from our mice and examine their insulin secretion. The machine is interesting but involves close examination so usually we don’t leave its side.
In down time, I usually get to help others in the lab with prepping to use the Perfiusion machine, genotyping animals, or general mice handling activities to make them more comfortable.
My lab is always cold but otherwise very comfortable! The office areas of the lab are beautiful since its a converted tobacco drying warehouse. Since we’re in the heart of downtown Durham there’s always good coffee spots nearby!
