My Internship
I worked in the Laboratory Animal Resource Center (LARC) at the Indiana University School of Medicine. LARC focuses on promoting the wellbeing of animals used in research through educational training, animal husbandry, and providing specialized services. They create research projects that focus on improving the welfare of animals used in laboratory research around the country. This research will ensure animals are properly taken care of to better their quality of life and high-quality research. My role was to create a research project studying animal recovery from laboratory technique training sessions. This experiment can expand what is currently known about training course recovery to ensure the mice are properly cared for which has positive implications on welfare and future research that mice are used in.
Final Project
Mouse Technique Training Stress Analysis Survey.pptxProject Summary
Mice are common models in biomedical research. Researchers must be properly trained in technical skills before working with mice for the benefit of both animal welfare and successful research outcomes. Training takes a couple of sessions for each person to be competent in all the basic skills. Currently there is no standard amount of rest required for the rodents between sessions, which leaves room for overuse of the animal. Our goal is to determine an appropriate timeline of recovery from the training courses so institutions can better care for the rodents in the training colony. Our research design recreates the mouse basic and advanced training courses, and the subsequent stress response was analyzed through fecal samples to measure corticosterone (the stress hormone in rodents). When the stress levels return to baseline it was assumed the animal was ready for their next training session. We also sent out a survey to institutions to better understand their training course standards to determine the relevance of our study.
Why my work matters
My contribution to LARC has been small, but mighty. When I reflect where I had the most impact on the team, I think of our weekly laboratory meetings. I would always attend and be ready to learn. If I had signed up to give a presentation I put in effort to make it timely and enjoyable. As an undergraduate student I learned so much from other presentations and could give feedback on whether someone not in the field could understand the material. I think my presence was uplifting and we created a community I was excited to meet with.Â
The project I created this semester serves LARC's ultimate goal of promoting the wellbeing of laboratory animals through educational training. There is currently a deficit in knowledge about how long mice need to recover after training, and we are working to provide a standard.