It doesn’t always work the first time
Monday, June 11th, 2007…sort of like blogging !
Oh, to be a CSI lab tech on TV! - perfect technique going in, clean data coming out — in seconds no less. Alas, that’s television; this is science. Several of our lab newbies took their first wobbly steps at lab technique this week and learned that no, it doesn’t always work the first time.
Jackie Sink’s first posting is simply titled “An Ode to Failure” and details her experiences with electrophoresis in Sally York’s lab.
I remember my first experience with electrophoresis being less-than-successful. First try: Didn’t put the correct amount of loading buffer into the wells, so the results were skewed. Second try: Didn’t plug in the machine! Waited a half hour, then was completely flabergasted to find that the DNA had not moved at all. Third try: successful! Let’s just say that success is so much sweeter following failure.
With a bare desk, a bright smile, and a fresh pair of gloves, Julie Sogani is well on her way to curing cancer in Gerard Blobe’s lab. (And look at what a nice bunch of folks they are!) She’s investigating a part of the signalling pathway that seems to spur cancer cells to grow. “As I have learned in the lab this past week, one shouldn’t expect to get great results his or her very first try (or even the third or fourth tries!)”
You know, it’s probably a really good thing Jason Chen called his PI Sri Raghavachari a genius in an earlier posting.
One of the major adjustments faced by several of the bloggers in this bewildering first week is the experience of working with laboratory models — animals, that is. Biomedical science and all of the health care improvements it has created, simply would not be possible without these valuable model organisms like mice, fish, nematodes and monkeys. While the lab workers and grad students who have been working with these animals for years tend to have steady hands and nerves, the same cannot be said for the first-timers!