Student Research at Duke

RCR, RCR…rcr? So, what exactly is responsible conduct in research? Well, if any of you have seen the movie, And the Band Played On, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. I guess “responsible” research means more than just ethics or certain specified rules in the scientific community. It also includes respect for your fellow researchers and a certain level or expectation of collaboration among peers, even if they’re your rivals. Case in point: Dr. Gallo’s handling of the French discovery of the HIV virus certainly stepped over a few ethical and professional lines, if not many lines. Or, if you’ve read about the recent scandals involving high-profile scientists, such as Korea’s Dr. Hwang Woo Suk’s falsified data on cutting edge stem cell research.

So there you have it. Research, is a responsibility that is shared amongst all scientists. So…don’t falsify, fabricate, or plagiarize. Yeah.

Moral of the story: be responsible.

As I sit here in front of a Linux Red Hat desktop, while waiting for my SDS-PAGE gels to finish, I realize something, HHMI is not just about research and long hours toiling in lab. It’s about getting to know your neighbors and fellow fellows. For instance, we all come from different backgrounds and different states, but we can still manage to cook something that suites everyone’s liking. Veggies for the vegans and meat for those carnivores.

There’s a story behind this.

So last Saturday, our cooking group (me, Upom, Sidney, Lulit, Wendy) decided to invest in a two-and-a-half hour roadtrip to Carowinds. If you don’t know, Carowinds is an amusement park with 14 or so rollercoasters that straddles the border between North and South Carolina. But, the thing is…I don’t really like to ride rollercoasters. See, I’m more of a bumper-car and mine-train type of guy. So when Upom and Sidney decided to drag me to just about every coaster they could find, you can imagine my fear and dread.

…

Rollercoasters are fun.

After Carowinds and on the ride home, I tried to fight past my disorientation and thought about our trip. Yeah, the trip was long and there were random discussions about physics, but overall, it was a great way to get to know the group. We cook together, eat together, and learn together, but only at a theme park do you truly get to know someone.

Now back to SDS-PAGE.

So today in lab I made my first mistake: forgetting to centrifuge the bacteria before suspending them in lysis buffer. Oh no’s. Supposedly, the right way to mini-prep is to first centrifuge the tubes, then dump out the supernatant, then add in lysis buffer, and then resuspend. I just added in lysis…one step ahead of my game.

Well, that took down my samples, so I’m gonna have to redo them all over again. But on a good note, our E coli friends were ready to be French Pressed today. In case you don’t know, a French Press is this high pressure thing that weighs about 20 lbs which squishes the cells until all the organelles and cell membranes explode and pop out. Sweet. And now…they’re in the high-speed (24,000 rpm) centrifuge ready to be spun down. And I’m adding elution buffer to clean those tubes.

So…there’s this thing called a mini-prep, which is a technique used to purify DNA and such. Well, it was my first time ever doing a mini-prep, and pipetting by hand through all those steps…not so great for a beginner such as me. On the other hand, I did get to view some awesome data and learn a lot about what goes on in a typical biochemistry lab. (So different from the lab back home…so different).

Oh…it’s hot in Durham. Around 95 degrees hot. With loads of humidity hot. Like tropical jungle without the jungle hot. That hot.

And I noticed that the Blue Express closes before 2:30pm, which was when I went out for lunch, so I went to the McD’s instead from Nana Duke.

By the way, here’s some pictures of my lab bench and my personal desk. Not to shabby. Not at all.

note…photo uploading is apparently not working for me right now, so photos will come later. I DO have photos, I swear.