Having a bad day?<\/p>\n
Turn to the Worst Result Ever<\/a> blog for solace. There are some real stinkers on there. My own Worst Result Ever was a CAT assay that should have been renamed as a FROG assay. (Mitigating circumstances: it was March 18th<\/a> ).<\/p>\n My Best Result Ever is Figure 5B of this paper<\/a> . It was the last result I needed to complete the project, and demonstrated that the same gene promoter (derived from a retrovirus, no less) is used to drive expression of the non-viral beta3GAL-T5 gene in both the human and baboon colon.<\/p>\n It’s interesting that my Best Result Ever came out of my Worst Day Ever in the lab. It’s not easy getting hold of primary tissue from non-human primates, and I’d done absolutely everything else for this paper while waiting for my veterinary pathologist collaborator to call me with good news about an Old World monkey. (That’s good news for me, not for the monkey). He eventually called to tell me that he had a dead baboon on his desk, and would I like some? I replied in the affirmative and asked him for \u201ca small piece\u201d of the colon. \u201cA few square centimetres will do\u201d.<\/p>\n He showed up a few days later, and handed me an ominously large and heavy package. Getting a strong whiff of the formaldehyde that I suspected was degrading my precious RNA even as we spoke, I blurted out \u201cbut I asked for it frozen, not in formaldehyde!\u201d. Imagine my embarrassment when I realised that the smell was coming from him, and not from the sample\u2026<\/p>\n Upon taking the package upstairs, it became obvious that what I had in front of me was, in fact, a whole baboon colon. Complete with contents. Later emails revealed that he hadn’t been sure which part of the colon I required, and rather than calling back he thought he’d let me decide.<\/p>\n Anyway. My predicament generated much amusement in my labmates. I dumped the nasty lump of grossness into the fume hood and started setting up the dissection kit, RNA extraction medium etc. At this point I had to ask a grad student to bring me a large empty receptacle in case of sudden vomiting. It was the nastiest thing I’ve ever had to do, but I got my tissue, got my RNA, and got my favourite paper published. Oh, and I got stuck with the name Dr Monkey Bum<\/a> for a while too.<\/p>\n Of course, when I got sick a few days later, the doctor at the walk-in clinic had to go and ask me what I did for a living and if I could have been exposed to anything. I told her the truth but reiterated my belief that this was, in fact, a kidney infection. \u201cNo, it’s monkey pox. Definitely. It’s been going around in the States\u201d. I persuaded her to test me for a kidney infection before calling the Centre for Disease Control, and she was most disappointed with the results. Monkey pox would have been so much cooler. Having a bad day? Turn to the Worst Result Ever blog for solace. There are some real stinkers on there. See? Things could be so much worse1. My own Worst Result Ever was a CAT assay that should have been … Continue reading
\nSee? Things could be so much worse1<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n
\n[1] If you prefer your Schadenfreude in less geeky and more frequent installments, The FAIL Blog<\/a> is a good alternative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"