Confessions of a (former) Lab Rat

bq. My friend Jenny and I are moving in perfect reciprocity at the moment, so we thought it would be entertaining to plot our opposing curves simultaneously. I am leaving science for a career in publishing, funnily enough at the same publishing company where Jenny had her first editorial job. She left there to return to the bench, and is finding herself ramping up in the lab, as I wind down. Here is my perspective:

Wednesday, late afternoon.

The rattle of the roller door, closing off the loading bay, disturbed my reverie. I had just rounded the corner on the last flight of stairs: ice bucket under one arm, key to the freezer room in hand. With my dirty lab coat I even looked like a scientist.

I unlocked the door and put the ice bucket down. Lifting the lid to our lab’s minus 80 and scrabbling for my secret stock of DE3 RILs, I suddenly wondered,

What am I doing here?

Because, as you know, I’m leaving this lab at the end of February. Leaving this lab, leaving Australia, leaving the practice of science as a career. A one-way trip into publication, communication, whatever next I happen to think is a good idea.

So why is it that I’m doing experiments? More than that, starting experiments? I ordered some primers and ran a PCR last week. Ran a Western for my young apprentice, who was at Lorne. This week I’m going to set up a knock-down experiment and see if I can confirm the exon microarray data. I’m going to start cross-linking chromatin to see if we can do CLIP assays. I’m even (help me, please) about to autoclave some media so that I can grow up some protein. On Friday I made up three years’ supply of mountant for fluorescence microscopy.

I am supposed to be winding down. Maybe the last couple of months, where all I have done is analyse microarray data and document the perl programs I’ve written, are responsible for spurring me into a last-gasp frenzy of experimentia. For this is, quite probably, the last time I’ll set up an RT-PCR. The last time I’ll design and order primers. The last time I’ll mix together marmite-smelling powders, or certain salts with lactose and glycerol, and book the incubator overnight at 34°C.

My cells! Who do I trust to look after my babies? Who will keep the list of frozen cells organized, who will maintain that instinct of passage dilutions and timings? Who is there to get annoyed when students from other labs stick their dirty fingers in my pasteur canister? Who, in fact, will do the lab’s cell biology?

I have two weeks to ensure my notes are up to date, that my stocks are labelled and catalogued, that, basically, the next person can pick up where I left off. This should happen whenever anyone moves on from a lab; but there is an air of finality about this time.

Soon, although I might not know it at the time, it will be the last time that I’ll hold a “Gilson”:http://network.nature.com/people/UE19877E8/blog/2009/01/15/in-which-i-remain-precise-–-to-two-decimal-places in anger.

I see that Henry is giving Stephen lessons in poetry.

I’ve never claimed to be anything but an amateur, although a kind correspondent did give me a copy of Fry’s The Ode Less Travelled a couple of weeks ago. Rather like my scientific career, my lack of training hasn’t stopped me—I’ve written previously about depression and sex, both published at LabLit.com because they draw heavily on scientific imagery (and there’s an essay about that brewing).

And now there’s a new one. The accompanying photograph is of Hale-Bopp, which I snapped from the garden of a house two doors up from where Joy Davidman once lived. The poem itself… well, maybe you can work it out.

That is all.

The tyranny of biology
Leads to asinine hagiography:
Gallileo brighter; Einstein quicker;
Copernicus smarter; Newton slicker.
Bright stars all, their ideas distinguished;
Blazing lights not to be extinguished.
None could deny that Darwin’s gift
Rightly is termed a paradigm shift
But after all is done and said
Concentrating on a bloke who’s dead
Seems a strange and futile ambition
While we struggle for recognition:
What’s spinning Darwin in his grave
Is the adulation that you crave.

We’ve had some storms in Sydney. Rain storms, that is: the fire storms are a thousand miles thataway, in a different state (having said that, I stood outside last Friday night and could smell a bushfire somewhere to the west. But there are no trees between us and the Blue Mountains, so I wasn’t too worried).

So, this rain. It’s knocked over some trees:

Due to recent tree collapses within the vicinity of Oval No 1 and No 2 on the Camperdown Campus, an assessment of all trees within the area was completed by an independent arborist. The assessment found that many trees have reached or gone beyond their lifecycle and recommended removal of these trees due to the safety hazard they pose to staff, students and visitors to campus.

The Cardinal asks

How does a tree “go beyond its lifecycle”… life after death??

Any normal person would have said ‘the trees are old and are dead’. But I guess if you can talk that clearly you don’t get paid to be a tree consultant (sorry, ‘independent arborist’). Anyway, the email from the University continues,

As a result, we will be replacing a number of trees in this area with
the most significant impact around Oval No 2 where most of the current
trees need to be replaced. The Southern Blue Gums which are creating a
safety hazard, will be replaced with mature Angophoras which, as native
trees, will be more conducive to the locale and environment.

and I’m not even going to attempt to go there. I’ve still got a headache from editing Openlab ’08.

But, if you want to see a real, life, independent arborist, nip along to No 2 Oval entrance,
Western Avenue, Camperdown, tomorrow at 0930 (EDT) where there will be
an open information session to give you the opportunity to ask questions and discuss the removal procedure.

Which I can probably summarize as,

“We’re going to cut down the trees. Any questions?”

There’s a right way, and a wrong way.

We’re a big lab. Currently about 20 active (quiet, Rohn) members in the group including grad students. And there’s a new kid on the supplier block. They are SDR Clinical Technology, based in Middle Cove NSW. I’ve never heard of them, but I already have them marked down as complete muppets.

They’re trying to raise their profile and get us to buy the stuff they distribute—fair enough, but what they’ve done is mail three catalogues each to over a dozen people in our lab, including the grad students (and countless more to the rest of the department). Each set of three catalogues (none of which were larger than A4) arrived in a ‘Number 7’ padded bag (‘361 mm x 483 mm Suits A3’) which ‘feature an extremely strong and light-weight bubble lining’ and are, apparently, ‘ideal for packing items which require some protection from impact’.

The catalogues themselves: one is an instrument catalogue, which is fair enough, but one is on behavioural research (eh?) and the third is cell biology and electrophysiology. No one here would know how to electro a physiology if it bit them (Ian?), and me, the token cell biologist in the lab, didn’t even get the catalogues.

Kate’s called them up to give them a bollocking, but you know, I think they’re onto something. If you cut down all the trees, there won’t be any more bushfires, right?

About a year ago I came up with a cunning plan for a game for the two Pawns, and part of that plan was creating a secret web page and making a link to it from a different, google-indexed web page, so that when the Pawns googled a certain Clue phrase they would have found the next Clue. That project disappeared beneath all my other half-finished projects, but I was reminded of it, and the art of google-spiking, a couple of days ago.

Last week I reviewed Jenny ‘s book and she asked me what I meant by the title of the review (“I’m a professional cynic but my heart’s not in it”). I said it was a line from a Blur song, but I couldn’t remember which one, so I googled it [1]. I was gratified to find that the second hit was my blog entry at the Lab Rats. Jenny, however, reported that when she googled exactly the same phrase, it was the ninth hit. Me being me I started trying different versions of Google (.com, .com.au, .co.uk …) to see if there was a pattern, but consistently got second place. Jenny suggested that Google knew I was in Australia and was therefore returning Antipodean-centered results, which is an interesting hypothesis: at the time I thought it might be fun to get some more people to try it, and see what we could find, but real life intervened.

This morning I tried again, and found that the Lab Rats is sixth, but second place is taken by my Friendfeed notification. How bizarre. The link to the review on Amazon.com is on the second page of the Google results.

So, in the best traditions of quantum mechanics — that is, in the observing of something we actually change it (and ourselves) — your task, my willing minions, is to google “I’m a professional cynic but my heart’s not in it” and report back what you find; and click through to this blog entry once it’s there to make me number one.

¹ Country House

Kate runs the lab in which I’m a senior post-doc. Over the last three years she’s managed to work herself into a role where, basically, she runs the place. Me, I just tinker with things of which man was not meant to wot, and drink coffee from Azzuri’s (double shot espresso, one sugar). Oh, and I run the post-doc support group, although seeing the Royal is being refurbished I’m going to have to be a bit more creative about it.

Anyway, when I told the boss I’d be leaving at the end of February, there was a mad panic as he realized he’d have to replace Kate. Good post-docs are two a penny but lab managers who can keep things ticking over smoothly (and in the process save thousands of a year—remind me to blog that some time) are highly sought after.

So yesterday, when we presented him with a copy of this weeks Nature, he read it, giggled, laughed, and kept giggling for a while after that.

I think it was easier than crying. (And thanks to Maxine for the PDF. It’s going to be a poster at our leaving do.)

I made the comment in the lab just now that Australia is the only place I’ve worked in where it’s not unusual to get through three bucket loads of ice in a day.

Other pointers that we’re not in Kansas Leeds (hello Tony!) any more:

• When you get back to the lab after Christmas your NaOH/SDS is still in solution
• You leave media on the bench to warm up
• You delay leaving work not because you don’t want to go home but because there’s air con in the office
• We have shaking incubators especially advertised to cool down to 25°C

• Men wear labcoats (only if they really have to) with the bottom two buttons undone so they don’t appear indecent

I’m sure others might think of more.

Update:

Compare and contrast…