\nNot only did I press the button<\/em>, I emailed back, but I stuck a wooden stake in it for good measure.<\/em><\/p>\n \nMy own projects have lain fallow for several months now as I wrangled this paper to what I hope will be its final resting place. But now, things are going to change around here. No more Dr Nice Girl. Allow me to introduce you to my new Universe: <\/p>\n \n \nUntil further notice, I will be eating, drinking and sleeping with my final gene list. We’ve done the screen in duplicate now, and my colleague and I have scored all the data visually, and now I’m in the process of arriving at a Venn decision about the entire dataset: does this gene affect cell morphology robustly, reproducibly and with the majority of four non-overlapping inhibitory reagents, or does it not? And if so, each visual phenotype must be described by a controlled vocabulary of over fifty descriptions.<\/p>\n \nThere is a shocking amount of noise in our system. We knock down every gene with four different siRNA oligos, but many of these oligos have different effects even though they are meant to target the same gene – although thankfully, this is entirely reproducible. I am tracking these problem cases down now, eliminating the genes whose oligos just can’t agree on an overarching morphological effect. I am being ruthless, and it feels good. My longlist was over 300 genes, and the boss won’t be happy with more than 100. So out they go, left and right. I don’t care how beautiful the phenotypes are: star-shaped, sharply triangular, wispy and neuronal: if the oligos don’t agree, it’s sayonara. <\/p>\n \nI can’t stare at these images and enter their data into spreadsheets all day, though: I’d go mad. And it’s not just mentally difficult: my neck and head eventually start to ache, and the chronic repetitive strain condition in both of my hands is nearing critical. So for light relief, I get ahead on much-loathed chores, like tidying the tissue culture room or consolidating and alphabetizing the lab’s chaotic individual stashes of restriction enzymes. When people ask for my help I leap to their aid desperately: yes, I’d love to watch you develop your ECL on the new ImageQuant machine, or to share my recipe for the perfect SDS-PAGE running buffer! If you’re too busy, I’ll even make it for you!<\/p>\n \n \nI’d forgotten how lovely and cold Tris\/Glycine running buffer goes when you prepare it, the reaction sucking the heat out of water until the entire bottle is frigid. At times like this, when research gets far too abstract, it’s a relief to experience the mysterious laws of nature up close and personal, reminding me of why I’m here in the first place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s crunch time. I’ve cleared my desk for the final assault. No more distractions, no more experiments: I’ve even thrown away all my cell cultures so that they can’t tempt me with their gossamer lamellipodial embraces, with their scandalously promiscuous … Continue reading ![\"workstation.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/ue19877e8\/2010\/04\/01\/workstation.jpg\")
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