After lunch Chris wrote some emails while I shopped online for graduation shoes. After letting out a sigh of frustration at the overwhelming number of shoes I would never EVER wear, Chris asked what the problem was. I told him my dilemma and then brought up a picture of my graduation dress so he could fully understand my problem. "Allow me," Chris said and quickly landed on multiple pairs of Jimmy Choo's, Christian Louboutin's, and Kate Spades. "I like these," he stated. While about $1,000 out of my price range, I have to give it to him. The man sure does know his way around a high-end department store's online shoe section. 

Today I learned all about Mass Spectrometry, which is another type of GC. In a sealed system under a vacuum there is a lightbulb. The filament is made of rhenium which gives off photons and electrons. Whatever you run through the column will be showered with electrons and become ionized. There is then a repeller plate (an electromagnet) that pushes the ions through a series of charged holes which propels the ions through the field. The ions make their way through three axes and into a collector horn. At the end of the horn there is an electrode which calculates the mass of each ion. The final product is a mass spectrogram which graphs abundance vs. mass. 

In my last blog I wrote about evaporating the ethanol leaving a crystalized form of ganaxolone. While I was gone yesterday, Chris evaporated the EtOH using a speed vacuum concentrator. By increasing temperature you increase vapor pressure and by adding a vacuum you decrease atmospheric pressure which allows for the creation of the crystalized steroid. 

On two side notes, I learned that hiccups are a result of dehydration and the material that the mice's head mounts are made of is called methyl methacrylate AKA cranialplasty.

And finally, to answer more of Veronica's questions:

Are you looking for a behavioral & blood difference, or are you actually going to look in the brains of these mice and check for alterations in receptor number and locations? We are looking for behavioral differences through drinking. We are not looking for c-fos expression or receptor sub-unit expression via RT-PCR. We just want to know broadly are GABAa and b acting in the lateral septum. Eventually Chris will take the brain out and freeze it and then slice it and do a slide histology. He will examine the slides using microscopy.