Today's prompt is "Your Job" and I must admit I was pretty excited about this one. I think it was the one prompt I had already my idea in the beginning!
I love reading what job the others ladies are doing for living. It is so much fun to know a little bit more about them. Be sure to click on the links at the end of this post! :)
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| Pinkie: Chromosome 21, 16 and X/ Ring finger: Chromosome 12 and 13 / Middle finger: Chromosome 14 and 1 / Index: Chromosome 2, 21 and 4 |
A little bit of explanation, hm? Or are you as smart as I think you are?
I work as a lab technician in a cytogenetic lab in a children hospital! These are little chromosomes here. I will explain later what I do exactly, but first...
Genetics 101: You have 23 pairs of chromosome in all of your cells. When you make a baby, you give 1 chromosome and your partner give 1 of his "pair". That's how you get genetic material from both the mother and the father.
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| Pinkie: Chromosome 21, 16 and X/ Ring finger: Chromosome 12 and 13 / Middle finger: Chromosome 14 and 1 / Index: Chromosome 2, 21 and 4 |
Some diseases are transmitted genetically and can be discover early in the pregnancy.
Ex: Mrs. go to the doctor because she had a test that conclude she had a higher risk of having a child with Down Syndrome or maybe she has an familial history of a transmissible disease and have an amniocentesis (the liquid in what the baby floats). We get the sample and put it in "culture", ie: we wait for the cells to multiply and when we have enough cells, we do a lot of complicate stuff (I won't get into more details, it's too early for me to do that!) and BOOM, chromosomes appear :)
After, my job is to take pictures of these chromosomes and make a karyotype (Karyotypes describe the chromosome count of an organism, and what these chromosomes look like (..) Attention is paid to their length, the position of the centromeres, banding pattern, any differences between the sex chromosomes, and any other physical characteristics. Thanks Wikipedia!)
Pretty cool, right? I also work with blood samples (we have to do sometimes karyotypes for couples with infertility problems and for patient with cancers.)
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| Chromosome Y, 21 and X |
My background looks a little bit dirty, isn't it? It's a joke with myself, really. When we do the complicate stuff (mentioned earlier), sometimes the cytoplasm/cell membrane of the cell doesn't dissolve completely and we have a dirty background. I tried to recreate it :P
Happy polishing!
Irrationails xo
Awesome job you got!
ReplyDeleteFab mani and very interesting job! I was a med sec in specialist childrens services for years so know all about that kind of test from the requesting end hahaha, invaluable and fascinating! :)
ReplyDeleteGreat job ;) Greetings from biotechnologist from Poland :D <3
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