Might wanna skip the Micky D's....

Heyo,


Happy Tuesday! Today I arrived late to lab because my university was offering free H1N1/seasonal flu vaccines for students and staff. I am quite surprised they were able to do this as government institutions in the DC area aren't doing so yet (only to higher risk patients). So I took the opportunity and got my nasal spray vaccine and went on with my day. It was a weird experience (but not bad), as I've never had a vaccine via nasal delivery before. But any chance for less/no needles is good in my book. I decided to get the vaccine because I'm doing a lot of travelling during the holidays then going on a cruise in the beginning of January (woooooot!) and I'd hate to miss any/all of that..

I tried to snap a picture of the outrageous line. I arrived 45 mins before the beginning of the clinic, and still waited ~1.5 hrs for my turn (and the line was moving at a decent pace). Here's a pic of about 1/10th of the line:

Nuts.


But I'm back in scienceland now and wanted to share a crazy pic I took yesterday. There's a little science-y lingo that I've gotta share first to make the story complete, so bear with me..


Tomorrow I'm doing an experiment that requires I have live T- cells and Natural Killer Cells, cells of the immune system that live in the blood. These cells are able to kill other cells, and in my case I'm trying to coerce them to kill leukemic cells. I obtain these cells from the lovely/generous people that donate blood for research everyday at my research institution (thanks again!)

Because NK and T-cells have a known density or weight (for simplicity), one can spin them in a centrifuge (at a particular speed and temperature) and the many components of the blood will migrate to their respective levels. What you get is a layering of plasma on top, a thin layer containing NK and T-cells (which I can isolate), and a bottom 'pellet' of red blood cells, debris, etc.

Now I have done this procedure 34859435893 times, but I've never, ever seen plasma this color. It's usually a very clear (translucent) yellow. This time it was extremely cloudy, almost milky (the top layer):

(Experiment performed at National Institutes of Health)

I was puzzled as I've never seen this before! I decided to ask a post-doc in our lab (her doctoral work was in metabolism). Apparently it means the person that donated blood ate an extremely high fat meal right before giving blood. How crazy!!




Intuitively, I always imagine my food passing through my mouth, down my esophagus, to my stomach, etc. It makes sense and I know that fat travels through the blood, as this is the cause for many cardiovascular conditions, including atherosclerosis. But I guess I just never picture the fat from my recently eaten pizza traveling through my blood vessels immediately after I eat it!




Might be a reason to skip the old Micky D's and opt from some oatmeal and fresh fruit (now I literally know why they say oatmeal lowers cholesterol levels....)


Anyways, sorry if you didn't find this as interesting as I did! Hope this post didn't make y'all vom your lunch!

<3
Lauren