Senior Project Week 4 - Continuing Dissections

This week I continued to work on removing intact worm nerves. On Monday, I started by helping a med student in my bay with creating the PBS solution out of Monobasic and Dibasic solution. For the rest of the week, I focused on being able to remove all of the worm’s internal organs besides the nerve without damaging the latter. It was a complicated process, but I have gotten the hang of it. Additionally, me and Claus were able to properly locate the Medial Giant Fiber consistently, as well as sometimes locate the intact Lateral Giant Fibers. Two Lateral Giant Fibers and one Medial Giant Fiber make up the worm’s ventral nerve chord. I took photos of the microscopic view using Xiaodong’s Nikon SMZ1270i. The images are below.

Next week, I look forward to starting the stimulation of the nerve and measuring the compound action potential, as well as exploring further into the thermodynamics of the fluid membrane.