Summary
Using a JoVE video article, Purdue University researchers successfully adopted a special surgical procedure, thus avoiding the expenses of travel for in-person training — as well as reducing the lab expenses incurred by a traditional surgery protocol trial-and-error learning process.
Challenge
Dr. Theresa Casey(Courtesy of Purdue)
Dr. Theresa Casey is a research assistant professor in animal sciences at the Plaut Lab, part of Purdue University’s College of Agriculture, based in West Lafayette, Indiana. She specializes in mammary development and neoplasia, as well as lactation regulation. As part of her researches, she needed to learn the technique for suprachiasmatic nucleus surgery. This would have required her to visit Buffalo, New York, for in-person training with a collaborator. Besides the loss of a few days, the trip would have also cost thousands of dollars for the round-trip flight, food, hotel, and related expenses.
Solution
To avoid spending grant money for the cross-country trip, Dr. Casey instead found a suprachiasmatic nucleus surgery protocol video article, available from JoVE. This web-based visualization was published by the lab of Gabriella Lundkvist, a neuroscientist at Sweden’s Karolinksa Institutet. The article demonstrated the exact protocol Dr. Casey’s lab needed.
Results
By streaming the video article via JoVE.com, Dr. Casey successfully learned the method. As she notes: “I’ve been doing research for 20 years, and having JoVE makes things so much easier. You can educate yourself on the research other scientists are doing around you and get familiarized with a technique before you try it.”
The use of JoVE resulted in several quantifiable time and money savings:
- Relying on JoVE’s professionally produced video, Dr. Casey reduced the expected time to learn the procedure to two weeks, down from an estimated two months.
- The Plaut lab saved thousands of dollars in lodging and travel for Dr. Casey’s training.
- By relying on the video for staff instruction, Dr. Casey’s team avoided expending $6,300 (in lost wages) that would have been involved with team training.
- The streamlined adoption of the nucleus surgery protocol reduced the typical trial and error involved in learning such a procedure, saving about $7,700 on reagents.