This week was the first week running experiments on our cohorts of mice. 

Originally we were supposed to perform the Open Field Test (OFT) on both cohorts of mice this week. On Monday, I was introduced to the behavioral testing rooms and observed Lina, the PhD student I’ve been working on this project with, as she performed the first couple of sessions. After learning how to work the software to collect the data and how to read the mice’s identifying paw-tattoos, I was ready to run the rest of the sessions. Lina has been studying and preparing for her qualification exam that is in a couple of weeks, so I am incredibly thankful that she has taken the time to teach me the proper technique to all the procedures we are doing, and I am even more thankful for her trusting me this first day to run the rest of the sessions unsupervised. 

Of course, it wasn’t as perfect as I had hoped… Due to the necessity to account for performance bias, I was assigned a different list to follow with specific chamber numbers for each mouse. However, during one of the OFT sessions, I mixed up the original list and the bias-corrected chamber assignment list, and two mice were placed in flipped chambers. Another problem I ran into was not reading the paw tattoos correctly - which if I had been running sessions with more than two mice it would’ve been more problematic, so thankfully it was just two. The sheet we are given to read these is inverted in real life due to the difference in position the mouse is properly held in (by the tail) and the position the mouse is pictured in (on its back). These mistakes were expected, and I tried to not be too hard on myself about it as Lina re-assured me it would be okay as long as everything was noted. After this, the second half of the cohort ran a little smoother - it turned out to be a lot of repetitive work to make sure all the mice were tested under the same conditions.

I went in on Tuesday confident in my abilities to do a more efficient and accurate job with the second cohort of mice, but the room that we booked didn’t include the OFT chambers that we needed, so we had to quickly pivot. Lina and I decided to move the second cohort to the upcoming week, and Tuesday would be used as a rest day for the first cohort of mice. This switch gave me room to shadow some more cool procedures that were needed for another project, such as brain freezing! This was the second part of the procedure I witnessed last week: After the perfusions, brain tissue was collected and placed in sucrose solution and today I was able to see this tissue being frozen and preserved for future slicing and imaging. Lina gave me all the instructions needed to do this procedure correctly, and I was encouraged to even do a couple of these myself! 

Wednesday was cohort one’s Elevated Plus Maze (EPM) day. If you're unfamiliar with the EPM, picture a 3D plus sign: two opposing arms are enclosed by protective walls, while the other two are completely open - with nothing protecting the mice from jumping off to the floor. This was a much more chaotic test, given that it was a bit more complex to set up and the mice were able to grab onto the walls before being placed in the start position (the intersection of the arms). However, after observing and practicing with the extra mice of the cohort, I was able to do this without any notable hiccups.

In conclusion, this week was filled with issues that researchers run into every day and I was happy to see Lina handling this in such a professional way while preparing for her exam and guiding me.  One thing I will mention about both the EPM and the OFT, while not necessarily difficult tests to run, to do the whole cohort, it took about 5 hours - which can be very draining and even boring when you’re sitting in a small testing room, performing very repetitive work - my first real exposure to the world of research. While at first it was a little tedious, I was happy to get into a routine - which I’ve realized is very important to me in my day-to-day life as it gives me stability. 

Thank you for reading :-)

PS: Shoutout to Elena, another amazing Laidlaw Scholar who started her research project this week! She has been my T buddy as we travel back and forth between the Medford and Chinatown campus. We have been learning a lot about each others’ research and it’s inspiring to see other projects develop. Follow her journey here.