Part Time Job Opportunity

 

Job Description

                My name is Megan Pope and I am the colony manager for Dr. Barry Byrne’s lab at the University of Florida, where we have a colony of Lapphund dogs that are carriers for Pompe’s Disease. The dogs in the study mimic the infantile onset in humans and typically do not begin to show clinical signs until they are about six months old. Our lab has been in the process of creating an injection that will hopefully correct the disease through gene therapy.

                Pompe’s Disease is an autosomal recessive glycogen storage disease that is caused by a deficiency or absence of acid alpha-glucosidase (GAA) that causes degenerative neuromuscular disease. The disease is classified as glycogen storage disease type II as the GAA is the enzyme that is required for glycogen degradation in the lysosomes is deficient or absent, and thus the glycogen accumulates in the muscles and causes the cells to enlarge. This accumulation affects the skeletal muscle, cardiac muscles, and liver eventually causing progressive cardiac myopathy, skeletal muscle weakness, respiratory difficulty and severe cardiac hypertrophy. There are three categories of the disease, which are infantile onset, juvenile onset and late onset. With the disease, the dogs are also prone to megaesophagus. This condition will cause the dogs to have chronic vomiting problems and troubles maintaining weight.

                As a part of this protocol we are breeding heterozygous animals to get homozygous recessive animals that will display the clinical signs. The homozygous dominant and heterozygous animals do not display any associated signs of disease and thus will be adopted out to approved forever homes. The affected dogs will develop cardiorespiratory problems and some skeletal muscle problems and will require around the clock care.

                I am currently looking for students who can assist during the whelping process and afterwards with the affected puppies. There will be continuous breeding done in order to produce enough affected puppies to complete the study.

 The students will be required to:

• Provide supplemental feeding to puppies who are not suckling well
• Providing care to the dam, including feeding, cleaning and allowing her exercise
• Some behavioral training with the older dogs
• Assisting with semen collections and artificial insemination
• Work 4 hour blocks of time completing all required tasks
• Providing all dogs with standard care
  • Giving any necessary medications
  • Cleaning ears
  • Giving bathes
• Weighing puppies daily
• Reporting any health concerns
• Basic dog husbandry
• Assist with performing MRI, CT scans, ECG/EKG

Other requirements may come about as the colony grows and the puppies are then treated with the gene therapy.

                 If you are interested in working with the colony please filled out the following paperwork to the best of your ability and return it to me via email at megan.pope@peds.ufl.edu or you can request a time to drop it off in my office. My office is in the Academic Research Building located between the Medical School and the McKnight Brain Institute. Please include a copy of your resume. We are hopeful to start breeding during the month of July but there is work to do between now and then as far as acclimating our in house dogs.

Please fill out the below information:

Name
Class/Year
Phone #

Please list your hours of availability (to work - not your class hours). This project will occur in the summer/fall (likely starting in July/August) so we realize that you may not know your final schedule yet:

Monday:
Tuesday:
Wednesday:
Thursday:
Friday:
Saturday:
Sunday:

Please list species you have worked with:
Are you available to work weekends and holidays?

1. Please mark with an X your level of experience at these skills: 

Skill	No experience	Observed	Have performed	Proficient	Comment
Canine Breeding
Puppy Care
Oral drug dosing
Intravenous inj.
Blood Collection
Animal Restraint
Subcutaneous inj.
Intramuscular inj.
Record Keeping
Computer Skills

1. Do you have experience working in a veterinary setting?  If so please describe briefly: