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\nTissue culture: the most fun you can have in a lab coat<\/strong><\/p>\n \nI waited expectantly as the Ph.D. student studied my scribbles. But then he slowly started shaking his head. <\/p>\n \n“Your first experiment in four years?” he said dubiously. “Only four<\/em> wells, maximum. Get rid of half of this.”<\/p>\n \n“Really?” I wanted to protest – I knew I could easily handle quadruple what I’d settled on – but the post-doc was nodding her head in agreement, and I found myself outvoted. Feeling like a lowly undergraduate rotation student again, I slunk back to my desk to drink coffee and get rid of four samples from my master plan.<\/p>\n \nWhen the time came, I was nearly tingling with anticipation. Remember, none of this was going to feel real until I had started actually working in the lab. In the past few days, one by one, the other lab denizens had finished unpacking and had started unfreezing and splitting cells, flipping flies, resuming their arrested work from a fortnight ago, gradually spending more and more time at their benches. I wanted to be part of it all.<\/p>\n \nI put on my purple nitrile gloves and a lab coat and began, shadowed by the very patient post-doc. Fetching ice, pulsing down the double-stranded RNA tubes, choosing which fly cell cultures looked the healthiest \u2013 and then I was sitting in front of the flow cabinet, ready to go.<\/p>\n \nMuscle memory?<\/a>. It’s an absolute miracle. The minute I began to work, I felt like I was possessed by my former self \u2013 calm, poised, confident as I manipulated flasks, tubes, lids, hemocytometer, executed sterile technique, all free and easy as if in a dream. Where was all this coming from? What neuronal connections were being prodded from their long slumber – oi! wake up, she’s at it again.<\/em> Why did the actions come so easily, when the facts and figures had been so recalcitrant and sluggish? Is it somehow more evolutionarily adaptive to remember how to do<\/em> instead of how to write and speak?<\/p>\n \nWell, it seemed<\/em> easy enough. But all bets are off if my cultures are contaminated on Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On Friday, I began my first experiment in over four years. Now, my normal inclination when planning an experiment is to squeeze in as many samples as humanly possible. And this, to be layered on top of a week’s worth … Continue reading