•  
  •  
 

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

hormonal effects, antibody-secreting cell migration, mice, progesterone

College

Life Sciences

Department

Microbiology and Molecular Biology

Abstract

I started by following the injection protocol established by Weisz-Carrington , et al., administering 5 mg of progesterone and 4 µg of estrogen daily for 21 days, followed by 7 days of 2 mg of prolactin. Since progesterone and estrogen are lipid-soluble, olive oil was used as a solvent; unfortunately, even with heat and time, the lipid solvent never fully dissolved the hormones that we bought in powder form. Consequently, I was injecting more of a suspension than a solution, and I was never sure that all the hormone was delivered, or how much had been delivered in a form accessible to the mice’s hormonal receptors. Over the course of the first three weeks, many mice died. Since both test and control mice died, we presume their death was due to the high volume of oil with which we were injecting them. I ran PCR on what tissues we did harvest, but without conclusive results.

Download

Included in

Microbiology Commons

Share

COinS