Kubke Lab:/Notebook/Cranial nerve development/2014/11/18

Cranial Nerve Development

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Entry title General Helen Day 2 Today I injected dye into the embryo I dissected last night. I managed to try and dye all 4 nerves (both trigeminals and VIII nerves). I then spent the morning with Fabiana learning how to crack open the embryos. Unfortunately half of them were dead and so we are going to need to experiment a bit with the incubator and see what needs changing and why they are dying. The ones that were alive were around days 18-22 which is exactly the time I would like to study so that was reassuring that the ones that did survive took about 3.5 days to develop to stage 18-22. I have figured out based on that, which days I need to set further eggs and crack them. It was a whole different experience, seeing the embryos live and their little one chambered hearts pump blood around the one artery they seemed to have. I then attended a research presentation on notch1 function as a potential novel treatment of melanoma with Fabiana. I found it hard to follow what the woman was saying and it was pretty overwhelming however it’s good to see examples of really high quality scientific research (however I don’t have the skills yet to judge whether it was high quality I am assuming it was). In the afternoon I checked on the embryo that I dyed yesterday and I couldn’t really tell whether the nerve had taken up the dye but we’ll see tomorrow when we mount it and the one from today. I also had a go a dissecting a stage 17 embyro- the smallest I’ve done yet and it was easy in some respects such as stripping it’s layers and moving it around but then very fiddly and the nerves came off almost too easily and before I knew it I had actually removed the trigeminal and VIII nerves on all sides but one. So I ended up throwing it out because it was so delicate and was falling apart. Tomorrow I will be clearing the hind brains for proper analysis and also mounting them. Then hopefully analysing some data! Fabiana