That did NOT just happen.
I just wrote a ridiculously long post that deleted itself because I didn’t have sufficient security privileges to post it. This really sucks, and my post is now going to be less witty and more bitter because of it.
To rewrite what I just spend 45 minutes doing:
Since my last post, I’ve continued scoring and transferring worms with the same mutation but at different alleles that have died after exposure to a pathogen. I expected them to all have died by now, but, surprisingly, some have remained alive! I mean, only about 10% are alive at best, but they have been living in and eating pathogenic bacteria, so I’m impressed by them. Interestingly, the worms have pretty complex immune systems, producing antibacterial agents as part of their response to infection.
Anyway, scoring the worms is difficult as the dead ones look like nearly invisible sticks suspended in a thick lawn of pathogen; it takes an inordinate amount of time for me to spy them, and I commiserated with a fellow undergrad, Thomas, about how hard it is to find the dead ones. In addition to the invisible-stick dead worms, some crawl up the sides of the plate, burrow into the media, or just disappear somehow to escape the throes of death by bacteria (score these as ‘gone’). Hopefully my score sheet of alive/dead/gone worms isn’t too off and produces relatively pretty graphs.
Other than that, though, I’ve just poured and inoculated some more media for the upcoming RNAi experiments I’m doing with Katie, the grad student under whom I’m working. The basic idea for this experiment (which we’ll really begin next week) is to compare RNA in 2 different strains of worms, each in 2 separate environments, one pathogenic and one with regular E. coli. The RNA that is upregulated in the wild type but has no change in transcription levels in the mutated type will indicate the gene(s) involved in the specific immune response to infection and will tell us more about the mutated strain, trying to decipher the role of a specific gene that was mutated.
Thankfully, a new undergrad, Thomas, has just started working in the lab and is now making some of my media, leaving me lots of free time to blog.
While I really like the lab because it’s interesting working with mutated worms and determining their genetic activity/makeup, etc., I love the lab because of my co-workers, who are amazingly hilarious and intelligent…it’s kind of like having my own version of NBC’s The Office, except that Alejandro is a great boss, unlike like Michael in the show. Recent notable lab events include the lab’s intramural softball team, the Sex Panthers’, victory to secure a spot in the playoffs, and a birthday party (lunch, followed by a ridiculously large chocolate cake with about 1.5 in thick iced rainbows and clouds) for an MD-PhD student, Mickey. Another PhD student, Devin, is having his birthday tomorrow, so I’m looking forward to some more cake then.
June 24th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
Always write your posts elsewhere, e.g., as .rtf (WordPad) files. That way you always have the entire text no matter what your blogging platform does to it (eat it up, scramble it,….) and you can always just copy and paste again and again until it looks just the way you like it.