{"id":3601,"date":"2015-12-11T17:25:45","date_gmt":"2015-12-11T17:25:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/?p=3601"},"modified":"2015-12-11T17:25:45","modified_gmt":"2015-12-11T17:25:45","slug":"in-which-i-lose-my-tubes-and-other-manifestations-of-lab-rustiness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/2015\/12\/11\/in-which-i-lose-my-tubes-and-other-manifestations-of-lab-rustiness\/","title":{"rendered":"In which I lose my tubes, and other manifestations of lab rustiness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When you&#8217;re a young scientist, it&#8217;s the done thing to poke gentle fun at the lab head for being out of touch. For example, when I was a graduate student, we&#8217;d all pretend to be horrified whenever our boss, wearing that rare white coat, approached the bench to actually do an experiment. After all, once\u00a0you reach a certain point in academia, you spend most of your time holed up in an office, meeting with your researchers, writing grants and papers, and dealing with an increasing amount of admin.<\/p>\n<p>I try to pop by my lab as much as I can to chat with my team and see what&#8217;s going on first-hand. But sadly, with my full teaching load, I haven&#8217;t done an experiment personally for many months.<\/p>\n<p>Next week, as term is winding down, I&#8217;m going to treat myself to a small stint in the lab. <a href=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/2015\/11\/18\/in-which-we-are-funded-urinary-infection-in-people-with-multiple-sclerosis\/\">My new grant kicks in<\/a> on 1 January, but I&#8217;d like to get a head start before the holidays.<\/p>\n<p>Today, I ventured\u00a0down to the lab to\u00a0locate some supplies I&#8217;d need for setting up a cell culture experiment on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>And was completely lost. Not only has it been a while since I&#8217;ve done any lab work, but I realized that I haven&#8217;t done <em>any<\/em> since we moved here this summer. Hence I didn&#8217;t know where anything was. Where were the lab coats? The gloves? Which\u00a0fridge contained personal\u00a0boxes? Where, in the right fridge, amid the unknown landscape of boxes and tubes, were my own personal boxes?<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Fridge\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/lablit\/23031069974\/in\/dateposted-public\/\" data-flickr-embed=\"true\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/farm6.staticflickr.com\/5720\/23031069974_54603a90da_c.jpg\" alt=\"Fridge\" width=\"600\" height=\"800\" \/><\/a><script src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\n<em>It&#8217;s \u00a0a jungle in there.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I managed to orient myself in the end, but it&#8217;s a sobering reminder of how quickly one can drift out of touch. And it&#8217;s not just the lab layout or basic manipulations either. Techniques move on too. When I last did any serious genetic manipulation, it was all <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/RNA_interference\">small interfering RNAs<\/a>. Now the world is abuzz with <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/CRISPR\">CRISPR-Cas9 <\/a>&#8211; a methodology I know about only in theory. Imaging modalities move quickly too, as do sequencing technologies. It&#8217;s no secret that we oldies\u00a0rely on young researchers to keep the entire lab abreast of the latest developments.<\/p>\n<p>Dear reader, I found my tubes. And my lab coat. \u00a0And I remembered that particular flick of the wrist you need to wrestle the metal canes out of the liquid nitrogen tank &#8211; bonus points for not burning myself in the process.<\/p>\n<p>So not entirely past it yet.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When you&#8217;re a young scientist, it&#8217;s the done thing to poke gentle fun at the lab head for being out of touch. For example, when I was a graduate student, we&#8217;d all pretend to be horrified whenever our boss, wearing &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/2015\/12\/11\/in-which-i-lose-my-tubes-and-other-manifestations-of-lab-rustiness\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,49,34,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-careers-2","category-research","category-scientific-thinking","category-the-profession-of-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3601\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}