A perennial problem in our lab is that of labcoats. It’s probably fairer to say that the problem is the people, not the labcoats: a few people do wear them regularly, most do not. This may be due in part to the labcoats themselves: polycotton medic style, with sleeves that dangle into your coffee media and actually very little protection against full-frontal splashes.
I managed to sneak a Howie – style coat when I left the UK. These are pure cotton with side-fastening studs (not buttons, which can be fiddly with gloves and are much easier to undo when that hot postdoc from next door if you need to get out of it in a hurry) and have elasticated cuffs that don’t dangle in your et ceteras. I know that Fu Manchu, among others, suffers from labcoat envy, and on Friday we were able to do something about it.
In front of the entire stuctural biology group I presented him with the first in the Summer ’08/’09 collection of the Exton label of designer lab wear:
This coat, designed uniquely for the MMB, is manufactured from the highest quality cotton drill. It incorporates all safety features that our discerning customers demand, together with breast and hip pockets. The bespoke tailoring is guaranteed by our unique manufacturing process and warranty.
Contact us directly to quote for your needs or to discuss available patterns and materials with our designers. Due to high demand, we anticipate a lead time of approximately three to five months.
Cool! What happened to Jenny Rohn’s (sorry, Dr Jennifer Rohn’s 😉 ) labcoat competition? I have the idea that it must have been signed, sealed and delivered by now….but I lost track.
You sarcastic young wench, Maxine.
I think Jenny’s project was shelved, but we’ll have to wait for her to wake up and fill us in.
This is awesome and will be blogged about once I get back to that.
I don’t wear lab coats because I need to tape down the sleeves and at that point it’s just way too much work, and I find that losing some body parts to spilled acid is worth not having to attempt to tape my right sleeve with my left hand just to do some work for 5 minutes.
Then there’s sterile work: someone once told me that he finally got rid of the persistent infections in his cell culture by no longer wearing his lab coat, and I can totally see why.
And then there’s the fact that we used to be in a hospital, and the cafeteria was always full of medical people in lab coats. I actually told someone (that I knew) that you shouldn’t wear lab coats outside of the lab, because you’re taking gross stuff from the lab outside and bringing gross stuff from outside back in (which is more of a concern for doctors) and he laughed at me.
And this is why I do cell culture naked.
a few people do where them regularly, most do not.
Do they indeed? (Sound of a pedant being hoisted by his own wossname).
Are pedants (and others) not hoist with their own wossnames? And does one pronounce the “d” in “wossname” or not?
Hoist an irregular verb?
And does one pronounce the “d” in “wossname” or not?
Only if you pronounce the ‘p’ in ‘swimming’.
I can’t believe none of you guys has commented on Eva’s doing cell cultures naked. You couldn’t possibly be too polite???
Anyway: in one of my previous lives, when I was doing lab support, we found the same problem with safety glasses… if we bought the ‘fashionable kind’, they were worn, the ugly ones were not. This works the other way around: my husband insists on having an ugly pair of square brown safety glasses in his workshop – he says that nobody steals it.
Just got in – I wasn’t being sarcastic, I promise.
@ Steffi, you’ve just reminded me to catch up on the latest The Naked Scientists Science Podcasts Thanks.
Hello Maxine, I know, I was referring to our other conversation. Henry, thanks for pointing out the you.
Eva, is there room in your cell room for two?
pointing out the ‘you’?
WTF was I thinking? I meant ‘typo’.
So are these labcoats for real? And if so, are there other designs available?
Eh, (a) yes and (b) yes—although the colour/pattern depends on what Kate can find at Spotlight. If she gets enough orders she’ll make a paper pattern.
“Eva, is there room in your cell room for two?”
Room for five, even… =P
But I’m done cell culture after Monday. (Note that I said a similar thing last May, and am somehow still culturing cells.)
But as for labcoats, there’s also a girl in the US who alters labcoats and sells them on Etsy
And another Etsy store sells patterns for knitting a geeky frog dissection things
Put two and two together, and I see a neat extra income project for your family. Income that is useful, for example, for purchase of Fruit Loops or airplane tickets… =)
Altered lab coats? Anyone can do that. We’re talking about a whole new thingy.
Fabric with printed mice would be cool, except that it might then be difficult to spot the weanling-age “popcorn” variety of rodents when they leap off the back of the laminar flow cabinet and onto your lab coat.
I’d love a lab coat in tie-dye fabric. Tie-dye mice would be fun too, for that matter; I get bored with agouti and white and black.
Kristi, that’s what genetic modification is all about, surely?
—
Just had a word with the designer. She says she’s going to have a look at available fabric. If people seriously want something made, drop me an email and we’ll organize something.
I’d name a gene involved in generating psychedelic-pelaged mice haight ashbury; the abbreviation would then be hash. A large gene, with exons numbering in the 60s.
Bird feathers have structural color – surely the same can be achieved with mouse fur. Where’s a biophysicist when you need one?
HAHAHA! Nice one, Kristi. Unfortunately it’s the drosophilists who seem to have cornered the market in stupid gene names.
(I wonder if there’s a marker for drosophilia? I’d call it dross )
At regional developmental biology meetings, a grad school littermate of mine would preface every Drosophila presentation with “Oh no, not another MAGGOT talk”. In a whisper, of course.
Zebrafish geneticists have some pretty good names for their mutants too (_one-eyed pinhead_ comes to mind), but yeah, the fly people have the best ones.
I’ve been studying mouse pigmentation genetics for the past few years, so I have to pipe up:
1. There may not be a tie-dye mouse, but there are several shades of brown/black or red/yellow available. Only those shades, because there are only two types of melanin pigment: eumelanin (brown/black) and pheomelanin (red/yellow). Birds are coloured by other types of pigments as well. Humans are coloured mostly by melanins but also by carotenoids and by the blood shining through our skin (that’s pretty much my only source of pigmentation…)
1b. Interesting sidenotes: mice who only produce pheomelanin have yellow hair, but humans who only produce pheomelanin have red hair. For dogs the phenotype varies with breed. Some dogs have red hair (Like setters or spaniels) while others are blond. Blond humans have more of the darker pigment than red-haired humans, even though their hair looks lighter.
2.Mice do have great colour-related gene names! My favourites are: cappuccino, mocha, cocoa, chocolate, gunmetal, silver, toxic milk, and patchwork.
And thus concludes my lecture on
how I am a geekmouse genetics.(Lots more here )
So, I’m thinking we grow different mouse mutants, skin them then stitch the hides together?
Perhaps not.
I still like the lab coats that you can button on the side. Or even in the back. I know they look like a straight jacket but if I spill something I spill it on my front, and so far I have managed to spill it where the buttons split or where there is an opening.
Eva: We have the same thing, doctors (MD) and some of the other people walk into the cafeteria with the lab coats. I do not approve but it is something they think are ok. And they laughed at me too……
Guess how gross it would be if I walked in with my lab coat with “lung homogenates” or “bacteria cultures” 😉
My DPhil supervisor’s most caustic insult was reserved for people who wore the front-fastening labcoat open:
“You look like a junior medic.”
Any of you ever come across fish printing (Gyotaku)? Results can be quite stunning. I’m wondering about mouse printing on lab coats? (I guess Drosophila wouldn’t come out too well.. might as well go with the old ink-on-toothbrush technique..)
Y’see, what’s worrying me about printing post-hoc and things is (a) you’re left with the crap design and fabric of the front-fasteners, and (b) what happens when you wash the thing?
Not that I’m trying
to drum up trade for Kateto drag this back on topic at all.@Kristi: HASH1 already exists – thanks to the Drosophilistines – it’s Human Achaete-Scute Homologue 1 (now more officially known as ASCL1). And while mutations in it affect nighttime breathing, it does nothing to pigmentation as far as I know.
For lab coats, I still prefer white, though the tailoring could certainly be improved. I like to see when I need to wash it. We have blue coats from surgery for the tissue-culture room with ribbed cuffs; they’re not too bad if you can find one the right size so the cuff is not midway between wrist and elbow or at knuckle level.
bq. Drosophilistines
Ooh nice. I might have to throw this open: Drosophilistines or Drosophiliacs?
(and does anyone here do fly work? As opposed to Gee’s ‘fly-by-night’ work, that is)
and does anyone here do fly work?
Aye,
Bjorn Brembs
Does Björn know he’s got a stalker?
No flies on this man….
…used to. Does that count?
Dr Grant?
naw, Brooks is one of them damn neurophys sorts.
Elasticated cuffs rock. Taped cuffs, sadly, do not. The worst looks though are a) labcoat over shorts or skirt if shorter than the labcoat, and b) labcoat over hooded top – the “hunchback” hood-under” and “pillock” hood-over looks are equally ridiculous.
I’ve seen people here wear their labcoat and even their scrubs outside the building. Like, in the local supermarket. (Shudder).
That is one fabulous labcoat.
I am wondering about feather ruffles and the like. While undeniably stylish, I fear they may get in the coffee, or media, or jammed in the centrifuge lid, or something.
Sequins would be nice, too, although I suspect they might occasionally fall off into one’s important PCR reaction.
I shall have to give this some more thought, clearly.
P.S. Heather – do you know everything?
Clearly, Richard.
@Cath I’ve seen people here wear their labcoat and even their scrubs outside the building. Like, in the local supermarket.
haha Never seen ER onh TV Cath? 😉 I remember the look on my friend’s face (she’s an MD from back home) when she realised that here the nurses/other who wears scrubs walked home in them after their work day was over. Priceless. Absolutely priceless.
(I had already been stunned to silence the first couple of months so then I could laugh at her. Where I work I have understood it as the nurses have to buy their own work clothes… and wash them. But I might be wrong?! It is clearly different from “back home” though…)
Winty, my designer says she’ll sew the sequins on, and even do a flashy ‘RW’ for you that glints when the light catches it.
Not that you’ve worn a labcoat in ten years or more…