PDXWildlife hit a significant milestone today. We completed the freeze drying process on our first years fecal samples. Given that we have been running the lyophilizer for 12 months, 24 hrs. a day, this is exciting news, because we can now make our first delivery to the Dujiangyan hormone lab.
Some of you might be wondering what a lyophilizer is and why we need one? Well, we are wanting to know the cortisol and testosterone levels of these bears throughout the breeding season in relation to our male-male competitions. To analyze for hormones, you first have to remove all of the water, and to do so, you have to deep freeze each bolus to around -50 to -70 C. After the deep freeze, you immediately subject samples to a vacuum while slowly raising the temperature. This causes the frozen water to subliminate and condense away from the fecal samples, leaving you with dry matter. From there, you can begin the hormone extraction. In short, the less water that the samples contain, the better the analysis will be.
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- From This…
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Not to mention the amount of space that this saves. As pandas can deposit some massive mounds, we take a several hundred gram sample and turn it into 1/100th its original size. To put this another way, we collect roughly 500 individual samples each year. After freeze drying the entire lot, it is reduced from two full-sized chest freezers, and into six small sample boxes that I could stuff in a small backpack (see pictures above). Since the freeze dryer was entirely purchased from donations, this is possible only because of generous individuals. Without naming any names, we wanted to give everyone a big THANK YOU for making this milestone possible.
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If anyone has any questions about our poo project or how the lyophilization process works, leave a comment below. Or, you could come keep us company and assist in running the next 500 samples. Cheers!
–Nathan & Meghan
So glad that you have reached this milestone–what a process! Hoping it pays off in wonderful ways and leads to more excellent research and recognition.
Hi Frances,
You’ve been there for us the whole time and we appreciate it.
I’m always a little elated to move onto new phases in our research- kind of like a promotion party with less cake. With so many samples to hand over to DJY, I’m a little curious to see their response. Hopefully they are as excited as we are.
On a separate note- I just solidified my Aug-Sept trip and it looks like we will overlap for BFX. I might have to put your group to work freeze drying fecal samples. What more could you ask for on your vacation?
Cheers-
Excellent–an extra added attraction! It’s going to be a bit of a zoo, as it were, because Kim (our PI travel agent) is merging our group with her other PI tour there, so there will be lots of us (something like 28-29 people all together) trying to have our pictures taken with pandas and visit or volunteer, depending on what is allowed at BFX by then. Panda poop, here we come!
Oh man that’s a HUGE group! At least you guys won’t be hard to find. I think the Chinese tourists might forget about the pandas and start taking pictures of the PI herd instead.
Looking forward to seeing everyone.