Endocrinology on the woollies is turning out to be a glorious hassle. Getting an assay validated is like playing jenga - you change one piece and the whole thing might collapse. Every alteration you make to your protocol means re-validating the whole thing! These assays measure the levels of various hormones but since there are species differences in the specific metabolites these hormones are excreted as, a test that works for one primate may be completely unusable for another. We have one now that works for a glucocorticoid (stress hormone) but our first attempt at an assay for testosterone didn't go quite so smoothly. Unfortunately there is only so much you can change once the samples have been collected and processed, and captive woolly monkeys are scarce. Luckily for me the amazing Louisville zoo was generous enough to collect and ship some samples to our lab! The Louisville zoo has the only woolly monkeys currently in a North American zoo... two adult males by the names of Henry and Tomas. Woolly monkeys are notorious for being difficult to keep in captivity - they suffer from a number of health issues, many of which seem to be stress related. The assay we have for GC means that zoos will now be able to measure stress levels in their animals and the data I collect in the wild will mean they will have something to compare it to. Now if only testosterone would behave itself!
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June 2016
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