The Bauer Confidential

OK, I’ll warn this is a rant. But I’ll try to keep it short. I work with mice in the lab, particularly mice that carry a detrimental mutation. So I don’t get very many of these mice, and when I do they often get sick before they are old enough to be used in experiments; therefore when I do have a mouse, it is extremely precious. For the past several months I have been doing a complicated procedure that involves isolating a very small number of cells from these mice when they reach a certain age. To date I have obtained cells from nine mice, and they are waiting patiently in the freezer. Today I was going to process mouse number 10, the final mouse needed for this very important experiment that has been a long time coming. This experiment requires the use of a Cell Sorter, a very expensive and complicated machine that uses lasers to detect and sort specific cells away from the ones I don’t want. Because of the delicate and expensive nature of this machine, the department employs two people who run everyone’s samples. One of those people is on vacation. Today I got up early, rushed in to work, began my experiment on the only one of these very precious mutant mice I have. My cells were happily spinning in the centrifuge when I was told that the other operator called in sick. I will not type the expletive that I uttered at that moment. I won’t have any other mice ready for at least two weeks. And I can’t even use the cells for something else because I didn’t prepare them in a sterile fashion. Remind me why I decided to become a scientist?

The big science story of last week was probably the announcement that the platypus genome has been sequenced. There are many reasons why I think that is cool, mainly because the platypus is such a weird animal. It’s got a bill, lays eggs, nurses young, and is a mammal. Such an odd creature!

There was also another article that seemed interesting. Why are some people obese and others lean? An article published online in Science last week looked at the biological aspects of this. Using BMI, the authors arranged two study groups, obese and lean. It was discovered, not so surprisingly, that obese people have a larger total number of fat cells than leaner people. When examining different age groups, it was also found that from early childhood to about 20 years old, the body is consistently increasing the total number fat cells. After the age of 20, the number of fat cells in your body appears to remain constant. The authors suggest that total number of fat cells in the adult body is determined sometime during childhood. What determines that number is a good question, but don’t despair!! We can still loose weight. The authors examined patients before and after gastric bypass surgery to see how they lost their weight. It was discovered that two months after the surgery (and after many pounds were lost), the number of fat cells remained the same, but the fat cell volume was greatly reduced. So adults lose weight by decreasing the Read more »