Electrophysiology in Japan

Wowza! Sensory overload! What a fun day. Electrophysiology is crazy crazy over here, but I think it's good. First of all, the prep is oriented 90 to the left. Innnnnteresting.... Then it is an upright scope rather than inverted and that makes everything look completely different, then I had to learn how to use that awful box with the square divisions, then I had to learn how to use the chart recorder (and I thought Dr. Bolby was crazy to teach us that stuff in Biochem lab), and the suction and recording electrodes are all different models with of course 6 crazy dials for positioning that all go the opposite way you think they should go. The suction syringe is absolutely awesome, I'm going to be begging for one when I get back. Dr. Kuromi spent all morning tweaking the rig with me, then all afternoon as a wire was broken and then the stimulater suddenly wasn't working. Good to know the demons are in Japan too. It was really fun troubleshooting with him though, I learned heaps about how the rig really works and how to test each circuit... man it was fun. We never completed a successful stimulation as the prep was dead by the time everything was working.(Interesting side-note about why it's so fun to work with Dr. Kuromi: when something breaks, Dr. Kuromi laughs. When something else breaks, he laughs. When he stabs the prep, he laughs, when the electrode tip is broken, he laughs... makes ephys really fun! When the prep was near death and giving crappy membrane potentials, he said that "the preparation is tired," and when we had been fixing things for hours and the prep was dead again, he said we would continue tomorrow "because maybe researcher is tired too." So fun!) Anyway, I can poke preps over here, they zipped to -65 faster than they do at home. FYI Carin, the electrodes are in the "long family" over here, like the ones we would get when we only pulled through 1 cycle. None of them are creepers, and they are apparently 20M Ohm resistance but I don't quite have a feel for balancing the bridge here. It's a very different set up, holy cow. I fried my last prep trying to figure out the stimulator, but I have high hopes for the next one. Oh, and the intracellular solution is just 4M K-acetate. I wonder how that changes things.

So it was a fun day for science. Checking out techniques in other labs is extremely fun, I should do it more often.

I'm eating pizza with potatos on it. I couldn't see the potatos in the picture. Sometimes after a day on the rig with no successful recordings you just have to have pizza. Sometimes you have to have pizza on other days too. I successfully made the Japanese laundry maching do my laundry last night. First I was spinning before it washed, then I think I washed everything twice, but the objective was accomplished. I don't really know what worked in the end so I'll be pushing buttons at random next time too.

Pizza is gone, maggots for dessert. Later!

Janel