GingaNinga

I spent a career in translational medicine (research). Its not a perfect 1:1 but most of the time these models are very good.

it still blows my mind it can make literally any sound.

I still don’t get how headphones work and thats always bugged me. how digital files translate into sound and how a little speaker makes that sound.

I had a brazillian co-worker that brought in “real bananas” and it was a night and day difference. way more flavour.

Joe rogan origin story.

We’re regulated health professionals, its like how we can’t work on a family member or friend, it introduces bias. Its just the law and I understand why. I don’t think doctors can self-diagnose either, they need an appointment for someone else to do it just like everyone else.

no in med lab its super illegal to perform diagnostic tests on your own samples, you have to jump through the same hoops as everyone else and trust the system to handle it. In research/experiments its a little more relaxed.

I spent years in a research path core and am just wrapping up my med lab certification, it amused me when they hired actors to come to our program and we role-played dealing with angry pathologists, fuming nurses ect… Most of my clients have been MSc students or MD/PHD conducting research. they might be experts in their field and conduct these brilliant studies then stumble right at the finish line because sample collection was bungled or something ruined during extraction. I’ve seen some “interesting” DIY fixation and processing protocols to save a little money that did the same thing. I always feel so bad but most people are willing to learn and work with us.

I’m in pathology (research, transitioning to medical) so that was my frame of reference here. Its my job take the samples given to the lab and turn them into slides for analysis but tue results are only as good as what I’m given in the first place (crap in, crap out). same with blood draws, urines, anything improperly collected no longer properly represents the thing it came from. Then I have to tell the client that…

If its medical I’m pretty sure its illegal to work up your own samples. if its research… why not?

lab techs hate improperly collected samples. The people who collect those samples often in turn hate lab techs.

This plate is stressing me out lol

No, But I do like nebula and hate youtube.

In general Its nearly impossible to do vegan microbiology, everything contains animal products. mouse/goat/rabbit antibodies, bacterial culture plates require nutrients and they’re usually sheep or horse blood-based. Even cell cultures are technically live organisms, but so are plants I suppose.

my boss is vegan actually lol. i guess its like penance.

formic acid is also a rapid fixitive and decalcifier. We use it to treat bones to make them softer for histology so we can slice them into 4um cross sections (thats how microscope slides are made, then we stain them with pretty colours)

I owe my master’s degree to that website

I use mine mostly to store cold water in the fridge.

Mice are excellent models for many diseases but not all. When possible we study cell culture, then mice, then humans and there are rigorous ethics committees that require justification for the study, we don’t just do these studies for no reason. Their metabolism and physiology is pretty similar to ours, which makes them useful to study inflammation, cancer, diabetes and other malignant/metabolic/genetic disorders. They have a 21 day gestation period and research mice are essentially all clones which eliminates genetic variability as a factor (making them excellent for reproducibility in a timely manner)

some drawbacks include the spine, they’re haunched which makes it difficult to study something like scoliosis, we do this in zebrafish actually. Also I believe they have some mild immunological differences like ratio of circulating white cells and bone marrow differentials and minor differences in some proteins. Basically anyone doing these studies has years of training and really knows what they are doing, they would not be allowed to conduct them unless it was absolutely necessary to answer a specific question. Mouse work is a lot more complicated/interesting than this but I think I’ve made my point for now.

Source: wrote a portion of my thesis on justification of using an animal model for obesity research, then an 8 year career in a pathology core/phenotyping lab.

micrometer scale is massive for viruses, thats the size of a small cell.