Work-shadowing Day 1

Karyograms:

After drawing blood from my hand...

My partner, Joyce doing blood set-up

Me doing blood set-up

Biological Safety Cabinet

Work-shadowing @ SGH Cytogenetics Lab

Day 1:

First thing in the morning, Dr Alvin Lim briefed us about the work scope of the Cytogenetics Department. Their job is mainly to test for abnormalities in the DNA of the patients. They have many sections: Pre-natal, Bone-marrow and Pathology (Cancer). For example, in the pre-natal section, abnormalities may occur in cases such as down syndrome and trisomy 21. In the pathology section, abnormalities such as an unequal translocation of DNA between chromosomes 9 and 22 may give rise to chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). After that, we went to draw out our own blood to use as samples for our hands-on activity. The nurse could not find any veins on my arm as they were too fine, so she drew blood from the back of my hand, which has no flesh at all, and it was so PAIN la!!! Then we went to prepare our blood samples set-up. I was so nervous and scared. Must really control the pipette vv carefully lorz. My hands were trembling like siao.

Then, we went for lunch. When we came back, we observed one of the cytogeneticists in the pre-natal section as she prepared the amniotic fluid set-up. It was so cool la. After that we tried some karyotyping. It was SUPER difficult to pair up all the chromosomes lorz. But I still managed to complete 2 nicely done karyograms :)