A Day in the Life

My day-to-day schedule varies greatly depending on what tasks I need to finish that day. However, my favorite days are when I get to image. Imaging is an extraordinary process where you capture a series of images (shocking) of whatever you’re viewing under the microscope for some length of time. The Kiehart lab does a lot of imaging of different phenotypes of fly embryos during dorsal closure, a specific stage of fly embryogenesis.

Imaging is a pretty lengthy process, so on days I image, I have to get started early in the morning (the only downside). After collecting and prepping the fly embryos, I sort through them to find around twenty of each genotype currently in dorsal closure before lining them up on a piece of agar and transferring them to a slide. That slide is then set on chamber that will be placed under a microscope and hit with a laser. The closing of the epithelial cell sheets is recorded, and depending on the genotype of the flies, closure can look drastically different every time, which is just incredibly cool.

After the embryos have been prepped and left to be imaged for the next couple of hours, I’ll go through the fly stocks I might need for later crosses before I head to lunch. After lunch, I’ll check up on my ongoing crosses or complete different tasks around the lab, from making grape plates to changing the food for the fly stocks. After that, I generally head home, depending on how much is left for me to do that day. I look forward to going to lab because I know there’s always something new for me to learn; the same procedures can lead to so many new and interesting results.