When I think of the Veterinary school, I think about the vet’s offices and dogs. Mainly because my only experience with a vet has been because of our dog, Ally.
(It is interesting how our perception is shaped by our own experiences.)
Tuesday afternoon, after years of driving past NCSU Veterinary School on my way home from work, I went with Jenn to use the Flow Cytometry machine housed in one of the research labs. I was amazed at the labs on the campus!
For some reason, I imagined that everyone in vet school would be working with large animals and pets. This was a misconception! The building that we visited was full of labs working with different many different research projects for all kinds of animals.
The lobby at the Vet School was full of cool skeletons. This is a gorilla holding a human skull.
Our goal for using the flow cytometry machine was to measure the size of the genome of the corn weevils. Since little is know about the genetics of this particular species, it is important to have a scale for the size of the genome.
Jenn had read a research article that suggested that the male weevils may have extra, non-coding DNA. So we processed male and female weevils and used added a dye that would be detected by the flow cytometer. I had never worked with this technology before, but learned alot about the process. A simple definition states that “flow cytometry is a technology that is used to analyse the physical and chemical characteristics of particles in a fluid as it passes through at least one laser. Cell components are fluorescently labelled and then excited by the laser to emit light at varying wavelengths.”
One of the male weevil DNA viles processing in the flow cytometer.