4/16/2017: Week 9 – Moving Near the End

Week 9 was quite exciting for AniCell, not because a bunch of horses gave birth or we made a lot of product, but because we moved to a different lab!

Although the lab is in the same building (it's actually only two doors over), it's significantly bigger and even has a space we can use as a designated clean room. Much of Week 9 was spent helping with the arduous moving process, and because I don't want to bore you with the details of transporting materials and relabeling shelves, this post will be fairly short.


LIFE ON THE RANCH

 I actually missed Week 9 ranch duty due to some prior commitments, so I don't have much to discuss. Based on what I heard from the other interns, the day was spent finishing up final details regarding the tree and simply washing the horses. Here's another picture of those minis I talked about in my last post:


Mini Horses Pt. 2


A milk test was also performed that day, with no particularly interesting results. A short post section, but that sums up "Life on the Ranch" for Week 9!


BACK TO THE LAB AGAIN

 Although we spent a good portion of Monday and all of Tuesday just moving labs, we did get to do some lab work early Monday. As I mentioned in the last post, Mystic had given birth, and two horses had given birth by surprise, so there was a ton of material to clean and put through initial processing. We also used an autoclave (we've done this many times before, but I've never actually mentioned it) to sterilize some scissors and other lab equipment. Essentially, the autoclave is a glorified dishwasher which uses extremely high pressures and temperatures to "cook" the materials inside it in steam, neutralizing any contaminants.


Definitely Don't Want Your Hands in There


However, we had to put most of our important work (including packing the AniMotion I mentioned last time) on standby so we could prepare to move everything. In some future posts, I'll try to include some pictures of the fully furnished new lab. And that's all I have for now! See you next time!

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