As I’m writing this, it is the last week of my five and a half weeks stay at the Benedikt Hallgrímson lab (https://hallgrimssonlab.ca/) at the University of Calgary in Alberta Canada. They specialize in genetic morphometric analysis exploring complex traits in zebrafish, mice, and humans. However, I’m here to micro-CT scan some Arctic charrs.
Maybe some of you have seen a CT scanner in person, or just in the movies. These huge machines that look a little bit like doughnuts that take up an entire room. Micro-CT scanners are a bit different, for starters they are smaller and often are just big boxes instead of having that doughnut shape.
How I scan the fish
Micro-CT scanning fish has been an interesting process. Here I will briefly go over my work protocol. The first step is to put the fish in a chemical solution. We must do this so the fish will be stiff during the scanning itself. Fish generally have to stay in the solution for around a week before they are ready to scan. This chemical solution is made with formalin, which is a dangerous chemical, therefore whenever I was working, I had to wear a lab coat, gloves and mask for safety.
The scanner I was using came with a sample holder where I had to put the fish in. However, no part of the fish was allowed to touch the sample holder directly. I had to wrap up the fish in foamed plastics, so they ended up looking like little fish burritos. After this I put the fish in the holder, then placed the holder in the scanner. Made sure all the settings were correct and then it was ready for scanning.
As I needed to have very good resolution on my scans they needed to run for a long time. My longest scans were around three hours, for just one fish. Thankfully, the scanner I was using allows you to scan in batches, so I could prepare multiple fish which could then be scanned over the night while I was sleeping. Once all of this was over, I ended up with some super cool scans of the fish heads. I will then use these scans to study how the shape differences (in 3D) between Arctic charr morphs and age classes.
Important to take breaks
Even though I came to Calgary to work. Having a healthy work life balance is very important. One of the important things during research visits is to meet other researchers and see how other labs (and Universities) do their research. But it is also important to be a bit of a tourist and explore the city/country you are visiting. For example, going to museums or hiking around in the natural parks around the area.
