She got married today! It was a Covid-shaped event, of course, but it looks like they had fun!
Meanwhile this was the hilarious email we got from her today (yes, on her wedding day), apologising for not reacting to some new statistics faster. (Yes we’re outraged Agustina, just outraged).
Misha‘s paper about resilience is in press!
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031938420303917
And Michelle’s paper about zebrafish preferences is resubmitted with a more fundamental intro. and discussion: let’s hope they see the light this time!
… because we all need good news right now (especially after the final bushfire toll came in this week: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-53549936):
From Noam, as we reframe our zebrafish pref MS for Animal Behaviour (they rejected it without even sending it out to referee, for being too applied – read ‘boring’. But we disagree):
(This is much funnier if you’re a Brit: I’m actually tempted to leave out the “l” forever)
Nice coverage from the BBC of the mental health benefits of, not just being in nature, but of being by water:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000kfqy
(Posted from the Lake of Bays!)
To try to make perfusion as humane as possible, we are getting help from vet Sarah Baert, who’s tackling this for us for her board certification with the American College of Animal Welfare. Sarah advises pre-medicating our mice with buprenorphine, and a previous study mixed powdered pills with Nutella to create an analgesic treat. But we don’t think we can get pills, just a liquid formulation. Would the liquid form mix with Nutella, or would it be like oil and water? I turned to Elena and her ancient arthritic cat Ginger for help: stealing a tiny bit of Ginger’s bupe, we tried mixing it with peanut butter (our Nutella proxy): a bit of ‘science in the kitchen’. And it worked! First problem solved, another 10 or so to go…
The feisty but aged Coconut, adopted by Basma a while ago, finally was euthanized this week, at the age of about 3 years 3 months. Enriched all her life, she was the longest surviving mouse of our 2017 cohort. Here she is fearless in the face of Basma’s cat (not usually let in with her so wild with excitement):
Yesterday the lab met in person for the first time since mid March (all save Jess, who’s still in Vancouver so was there via FaceTime), meeting down by the river (next time there will be Boathouse ice creams) and celebrating with yummy take-outs from (you guessed it) Mijiidaa. Left to right: Michelle, Aileen, Andrea, Melanie and Lindsey.
… a lazy way to age well may be to get blood transfusions from the fit!
… and a stunning headline we ended the grant with, based on this cool but disturbing PloS Biology paper:
