Polar Science 2006 Blog
Polar 06 # 2
Posted By: emileew, Boundary Street Public School on Thursday, January 18, 2007
In my last blog I wrote about Dr.Kanatous's journey. On this blog I am going to write about Dr.Hawke's journey.
In the first week, Dr.Hawke's lab team told us all about everything we could ever know about The Weddel Seal. Everything from the seal's amazing ability to swim deep under water for its food and hold it's breathe for that whole time! They also filled us in on what their reason is to researching the Weddel Seal. Which is so that we can find out how they hold their breath for so long. It would be SOO helpful to humans if they could make a mchine that could do the same thing that the Weddel Seal's organs enable it to do.
In week two the lab team was working busily on the cryostat machine, which is a device used to cut peices of muscle tissue. Also, the lab team had to battle "freeze fracture" which the ice team also had to battle with in Antartica.
In week three, Sophia informed us of all of the separeate jobs the members of the lab team would be doing.Spohia's job was to study myglobin, vasculature and intramuscular adiposity. Jesse's was to study fibre type and intramuscular lipid content. Peter's was to study the muscle stem cells. All of them were aiming for a common goal= to confirm last years findings and discover how each part affects the other.
In week four, Peter informed us about how skilled he Sophia and Jesse had become at crysosectioning. Also he told us more about immunohistochemistry which he is using to helping him study the muscle stem cell number and distribution in Weddell seals.
Will add more later.
Emilee*
Boundary Street P.S
[ Back: What Happend on Polar 2- continued. | Index | Next: What Happened On Polar 3, a finale. ]