This past weekend was great! A few REU students and I ventured into downtown Coos Bay and got much-needed groceries and sweet treats from Fred Meyers. While downtown, I got to try Dutch Bros, a west-coast coffee chain that I've been dying to try since flying out. Seeing as though Dutch Bros is drive-through only (and we did not have a car), we quite literally stood between cars to wait in line. As a coffee lover and barista- I give it a 10/10. On Monday, Lisa, Debby, and the rest of the OIMB dining hall staff made the most beautiful spread of food to celebrate the 4th. Thanks to Maya and her grilling expertise, I tried my first oyster! When you smother them in lemon and garlic butter sauce, it's hard not to like them. A few of us went down to the OIMB beach after the picnic to lay in the sun, talk on the jetty, and watch Catalina bravely swim in the coldest water ever. Although proposal drafts were due this week, we made sure to have some fun in between writing and peer-reviewing. Earlier this week in the lab we focused on our individual projects meaning I got more familiar with the ultramicrotome. To start, I successfully attached a water boat to the glass knife using blue Sally Hansen nail polish (which is a lot more precarious than it sounds) and leveled the knife in the knife holder. I practiced making slices on the ultramicrotome with a resin block and -to my relief- they turned out great! The next steps for method trouble-shooting are to stain the samples and permanently enclose the cuttings under coverslips using permount. Once we figure out how to do those steps successfully, I can start going through the actual samples I need to image. Later in the week, I focused on exposing the snail gonad samples to increasing concentrations of Spurrs resin. To do so, I started by cutting individual gonad tissue samples belonging to species of Ifremeria, A. strummeri, A. boucheti, and A. kojimai in half. I cut the tissue in half so we had two pieces of gonad to work with in case our resin test went south. I then put the cut pieces through a dehydration series of increasing ethanol concentrations (95%, 100%, 100%) to fully get rid of any water present. After that, I mixed up the Spurrs resin (which requires four different liquid chemicals) and diluted three batches (1:2, 1:1, 3:1 Spurrs to ethanol) to place the tissues through an infiltration series. Each of these steps takes anywhere from 3 to 12 hours, so in total it's a 2-day process. This Saturday the REU crew is going out on OIMB's boat, the RV Pluteus, and dredging up invertebrates that live on the bottom of the sea floor. I'm excited to get my hands dirty and do some field work! Excitingly enough, my birthday is Sunday! I'm not too sure what I'll do yet, but I'm seeing some pretty promising weather so I'll likely hang out on the beach, read, and celebrate. See you next week!
2 Comments
Joe
7/11/2022 07:19:08 pm
So cool!
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Faith
7/14/2022 03:45:16 pm
I love this blog. Your experiences in the way you explain them are truly inspiring.
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AuthorHello! My name is Flynn Gorman and I am working in the Young Lab and studying the embryology of the gastropods Ifremeria nautilei and Alviniconcha this summer. I am from New Jersey and I am pursuing a B.S. in Biology at Trinity College in Hartford, CT. I also work at a coffee shop on campus and act as the PR Director for my acapella group. Archives
August 2022
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