Blood centrifusion

Although I much prefer to be in the field than in the laboratory, I throughly enjoy blood centrifusion. This is a process which separates red blood cells from plasma. This is done by spinning the blood inside a centrifuge at very high speed. Depending on the type of blood, the speed and amount of time it has to spin is varied. This process needs to be done as quickly as possible, so after arriving home from the field, this is one of the first things to do at the house.

This is the set-up we have in the basement to centrifuge blood. Permanent markers are at the ready for labeling tubes filled with plasma and the white styrofoam holds the tubes in place. There are two pipets here because there was blood samples from two does. It is important to use a new pipet per individual to avoid contamination, as well as making sure the pipet doesn't come into contact with anything other than the plasma.

I swear my handwriting is normally much nicer than this. When labeling any sample, the doe ID number and the date are written. This is blood before being centrifuged.

As one can guess, the tubes are placed inside the centrifuge. It is imperative not only to place the tubes in the right direction, but also make sure there is an even number. That is why we have a couple of tubes filled with water in case of an odd number of samples.

After centrifusion, the plasma is taken out and put into separate tubes. I've found that the more blood in the tube, the better for separation. When the tube isn't full, the plasma appears more pink instead of yellowish. We hold on to the remaining blood in case it is needed for future testing. The plasma is sent to a laboratory in Lansing, Michigan, where it is tested for a few things, but mainly we look for the presence of pregnancy-specific protein B (PSPB) hormone. This way, we can confirm pregnancy not only through ultrasound, but also through blood samples.

Unfortunately, the picture I took of centrifused blood came out blurry, so I took this one from the internet. After centrifusion, the plasma is clearly separated from red blood cells and always ends up on top.

This is plasma after I've extracted it from a tube using a pipet and put into this smaller tube. Sometimes if one accidentally gets red blood cells into the pipet during extraction, the plasma will have a more pink hue.

Before centrifusion, blood must be kept warm. After separating all the plasma from the red blood cells, both are stored in the freezer. The freezer houses many other samples as well including saliva, fecal, urine, and blood with purple tops (the blood tubes here are referred to as "red tops").