Three Blind Mice!!!

I was really excited coming into work today! I was finally going to get the opportunity to learn to work with mice! This is the skill that regardless of what interview I have gone in for, was a make or break deal for me! Finally someone has taken the risk on me to hire me without the mice experience and I am getting to learn it on the job!! Thank goodness for people who like taking risks and taking risks with me!

So I come into work! Super excited! I will get to tour the animal barrier facility. The barrier facility is a pathogen free environment so that means when we go in we have to completely cover ourselves and everything we take in with is must be sterile. So Russ, one of my colleagues also the animal technician for the lab, takes me to the facility for a tour and shows me around the rooms where my mice are kept.

I am expecting Russ telling me, “oh we will wean some animals and clip tails.” Nope, the first thing I hear/comprehend from Russ is, “I am going to ‘sac’ these animals!” – in the lab when someone is ‘sac’ing animals it means we are sacrificing them in a very humane way possible!

I was a bit nervous but tried really hard to hide it! I just kept saying a little prayer in my head for the mice. And that helped me calm down. The process is quiet simple actually. We just took the mice that needed to be sacrificed and put them in a cage and placed them in the CO2 chamber. The CO2 chamber releases the gas and anywhere from 5-10 minutes the animals “fall asleep.” Painless and quick. After the gas chamber is done, for pups who are a few days old, we must decapitate them. But lucky for me, I did not have to do that today! –Phewph!!

While the CO2 chamber was doing its thing. Russ and I went to the hood and started weaning pups from their mother. This is usually done 21-28 days after birth date. Weaning is done by separating the males and females pups into different cages. After weaning is complete, it is important to genotype the mice to figure out which mouse has the genetic make up we are looking for. So we use a little teeny hole punch to punch ears to help us identify the mice when we need them. After ear punching is done, we clip 5-10mm from the end of their tail to use as sample to extract genomic DNA.  Here are some pictures I pulled from the internet because I couldn’t take my non-sterile phone in with me to take pictures L

Mice in their cages.

How to tell the difference between male and female.

A technique to hold the mice esp while weaning and tail clipping

My outfit when I go into the barrier facility! No more pathogens on me :) 

Mouse ear punch ref. and identifying mechanism.

Tail clipping tech.

Finally, after all that excitement, we return to the CO2 chamber to collect our sacrificed mice and place them in the freezer for the animal facilities people to take care of the rest.

Sacrificing animals is part of the job, its part of the career. It was something I had mentally prepared myself to do. It just took me by surprise that that was the first thing I would do on my first day working with animals. Definitely did not work myself up to it, but dove into working with mice. I’m relieved that that my first day is done. Now I can only hope to not to get bit! 

~Cell-ebraTez