IMCB Day 3
This post i know is also late but i'll begin telling you about today....
So since most of the stuff had been done in the past 2 days, we only had dissection and mounting to do. Dissection was done under a microscope since the embryos are kinda small to do with the naked eye. The dissection process was simple-sounding: Cut off the tail end and throw away the head. I mean, for ACSians, we've done more to a frog!! But the catch was the phrase "under a microscope". That was pretty difficult to do. And they giving us syringes with a needle end to do the cutting wasn't helping at all. On top of that, the embryos are still in glycerol so they can float. Nightmare erupted until we discovered its easier to remove the embryos from the watchglass of glycerol and transfer to the glass slide first, then do the dissection, then add the glycerol and the cover sllip. so eventually i got mine. yay!! Not easy to all those who are reading this thinking we're all doofisus (or however you spell it). NOT EASY!! Anyway, the observation is just that the myosin areas which are basically all areas where muscle can be found is brown.. Not particularly exciting.... Oh well..
After the observations had been finished, they took us to tour their zebra fish facility.. Its basicallly a room with several side rooms and in the main room, they house up to 8000 tanks of zebra fish, kinda like a big petshop. No pictures cause we're forbidden to take pictures. So sorry folks.. Aniway, apparently they keep a couple of thousand or so fish and each scientist has one tank to keep his specimens. Even the lights in teh room are designed to mimic day and night!!! Talk about detail!! They feed the fish by placing artemia into the water.. Yes you read right, ARTEMIA!! the stuff we were bursting in the labs during prac last term!! They buy the artemia in cans and place them in sea water to allow them to grow and then they place them in teh water for the fish to feed. Quite amazing.... Too much to write here..
After that, we had lunch! Same place, same food as day 2 so I shall not elaborate.
After lunch, did our group photo as you can see at the end of this post!! Btw, the other pic is just a poser shot we were trying..
After that, we had our presentations i haven't told you about yet. Yes... Present on what we've learnt. Quick one.. and then finally end of session!!! We exchanged contacts and took our last steps around teh lab before leaving with a heavy heart, never to enter the building ever again.....
So i think we enjoyed ourselves. It was really good fun, but not something i'd do for IBA unfortunately... Too much wasted time..
Oh well...
Signing out...........
Here are the pics promised:
Our group photo!!!
A poser shot trying to mimic the beatles....
So since most of the stuff had been done in the past 2 days, we only had dissection and mounting to do. Dissection was done under a microscope since the embryos are kinda small to do with the naked eye. The dissection process was simple-sounding: Cut off the tail end and throw away the head. I mean, for ACSians, we've done more to a frog!! But the catch was the phrase "under a microscope". That was pretty difficult to do. And they giving us syringes with a needle end to do the cutting wasn't helping at all. On top of that, the embryos are still in glycerol so they can float. Nightmare erupted until we discovered its easier to remove the embryos from the watchglass of glycerol and transfer to the glass slide first, then do the dissection, then add the glycerol and the cover sllip. so eventually i got mine. yay!! Not easy to all those who are reading this thinking we're all doofisus (or however you spell it). NOT EASY!! Anyway, the observation is just that the myosin areas which are basically all areas where muscle can be found is brown.. Not particularly exciting.... Oh well..
After the observations had been finished, they took us to tour their zebra fish facility.. Its basicallly a room with several side rooms and in the main room, they house up to 8000 tanks of zebra fish, kinda like a big petshop. No pictures cause we're forbidden to take pictures. So sorry folks.. Aniway, apparently they keep a couple of thousand or so fish and each scientist has one tank to keep his specimens. Even the lights in teh room are designed to mimic day and night!!! Talk about detail!! They feed the fish by placing artemia into the water.. Yes you read right, ARTEMIA!! the stuff we were bursting in the labs during prac last term!! They buy the artemia in cans and place them in sea water to allow them to grow and then they place them in teh water for the fish to feed. Quite amazing.... Too much to write here..
After that, we had lunch! Same place, same food as day 2 so I shall not elaborate.
After lunch, did our group photo as you can see at the end of this post!! Btw, the other pic is just a poser shot we were trying..
After that, we had our presentations i haven't told you about yet. Yes... Present on what we've learnt. Quick one.. and then finally end of session!!! We exchanged contacts and took our last steps around teh lab before leaving with a heavy heart, never to enter the building ever again.....
So i think we enjoyed ourselves. It was really good fun, but not something i'd do for IBA unfortunately... Too much wasted time..
Oh well...
Signing out...........
Here are the pics promised:
Our group photo!!!
A poser shot trying to mimic the beatles....
