Archive for the 'Lab' category

Advice for new grad school bloggers...

Mar 20 2012 Published by under Blogging, Grad School, Lab

So today I got an email for a cool cat named Darwin Foo, who is about to go to graduate school, on advice for starting up a blog.  Turns out Darwin has created a blog Darwin + Fu = My Equation For Life.  So Darwin, here is my advice to you and any other grad student bloggers.  Dear readers if you have any pearls of wisdom, feel free to contribute as well.

1. There are no rules to blogging, do whatever the hell you want.
2. Write for you! Mostly, its the most comfortable and its where you best stuff will flow from and you are creating an honest point of view.
3. Since you are not pseudonymous, be careful about how critical of things and people you are. Folks now know who you are, best not to slag off too hard on anyone you work with or where you work.
4. Go comment on other folks blogs and make sure to leave the link to your blog as a trackback, that way they can navigate to your blog and read you.
5. Feed the trolls, but not too much. I give the Tideliar some filet mignon from time to time, but he'll keep eating if you don't cut him off.
6. Have an RSS feed, that way I and others can add you into their Google Reader subscriptions
7. If you are going to research a topic, really research. For example, in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina famed rapper Kanye West publicly declared that then President George Bush didn't care about black people. Kanye was a bit hurried in his research and missed the mark by a bit. If he would have done his due diligence, he would have found out that George Bush didn't care about black people OR poor people. Lesson learned Kanye, do your homework.
8. Have fun, if its not fun, you aren't going to be able to do it.
9. Oh and when you get a following, make sure to throw some linklove in other people's directions. The ever lovable DrugMonkey was the first to throw me some linklove and make mention of my blog (which I surmise he found me from his comments section) and gifted me much of the meager following that I have today. So I will always be thankful to him, even though he holds me upside down and shakes out my lunch money every day.
10. The internet will turn on you one day. It happens to everyone but don't be surprised if they go all 4chan on your ass. Just deal with it. It will subside, unless you piss off the homeopathic people. Or doulas!

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Planning for postdocing...

Mar 12 2012 Published by under Lab, Meetings, Mentoring

I'm getting to the point in my graduate student career where it is time to start contemplating postdoctoral fellowships and all that goes along with that.  I know I want to stay in the DNA repair field but want to shift away from my current spectrum of work into another subfield, maybe the implications of DNA repair in aging or maybe cryptochromes.  Honestly who knows right now.  I'm more looking just to get my name out there by attending some of the smaller more intimate meetings (Gordon, etc.) that are patroned by the movers and shakers in my field.  Hopefully by them seeing me and me seeing them I can lock up a good postdoc.  For those of you in postdocs or who have done one, I would be interested in knowing how did you find your PI and what were the circumstances of setting up your postdoc.

Thanks.

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Tired of hunting for lab supplies, let ChemSource do it for you...

Mar 02 2012 Published by under Lab

Sean Seaver, one of the nice folks at P212121, emailed me to show me a new service that the life science company is working on.  P212121 focuses on trying to supply labs with chemicals and supplies by having some of the best prices around.  I'm not one of the labs that uses them but they seem to have some decent prices on some commonly used lab supplies.

But where they shine is that they will actually do the work for them, they are rolling out a mobile app called ChemSource that lets you snap a photo of a lab item and send them a description and they will find it for you at the best price.  No longer shall you waste your or your lab managers time trolling through online or worse hardback catalogs to find some obscure item.   Let Sean and his folks do it for you.

I'm a fan of supporting the little guys and will always go with them over the big box suppliers whenever I can, especially when they are willing to do some legwork for me.

Below are the QR codes for the apps if you want to download them.

ITunes App Store

Android App Store

Note: I'm not getting paid to write this, I just like to plug cool and innovative companies and their products from time to time.

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Repost: Are you actually working with a neuronal cell line?

Feb 29 2012 Published by under Evil, Lab, LinkLove

Many labs are either working with or have HEK293 cells frozen back in their repository. HEK293 embryonic kidney cells were cultured from an aborted fetus by Alex van der Eb, a researcher in Holland. Were you aware that they might not actually be of kidney cells and rather of neuronal origin. The cells also made Frank Graham, a researcher with van der Eb, famous for discovering that you could transfect some DNA if you just toss some calcium phosphate in with them.

A scientist by the name of Gerry Shaw was trying to stain 293's with a monoclonal antibody that he created to beta-adrenergic receptor kinase 1 (beta-ARK) which should be expressed in the cells. Wanting to be a proper scientist, Shaw wanted to have a negative control for staining, so he grabbed a neurofilament antibody, which should not stain a kidney cell line right? WTF this and other neurofilament antibodies were able to stain the cells! Scratching your head right, so was Shaw. Using microarray data, it was shown that 293's expression pattern of neuronal genes similar to that of other neuronal cell lines.

So if you are wanting an in vitro model for kidney research, you might want to go get another cell line.

Link to Shaw's data

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But aren't we also exploiting them?

Feb 14 2012 Published by under Grad School, Lab, Mentoring

I hear the term "exploitation" being bandied around by trainees when they talk about the training regimen of life science research.  The pejorative seems to be tossed around a bit carelessly, I understand that the system sucks and that there are not enough PI jobs for all of us, but lets face it I'm not sitting in sweltering jungles of (insert 3rd world country) stitching together Nike sneakers for $5 a week.  Don't get me wrong there are exploitative PI's, they do exist, but I feel they are a minority.  I'm willing to wager for every Kern, there are at least 3-5 good bosses to work for.

But I pose a question for trainees to sit and chew on for a bit.  Are we not exploiting our PIs?  Do we not wholeheartedly consume their financial and intellectual capital to try and get us to the next step in the game.  Are we not sponging off them for their grant dollars, ideas and projects, collaborations, and other assets in order to take our science to the next level and then take off for our own greener pastures.  Some trainees even get to leave with their projects (or a piece of them) when they move on to take over their own lab (thus negating the feudal analogies that I here graduate students and postdocs whimper about).

There are PI's that will work you like a rented mule and cast you aside when you appear to show the faintest signs of a limp, but are we not also trying to squeeze every ounce of resources and advantages out of them as well?  It is a two way street after all.

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Science Job Candidates Say The Darndest Things

Feb 07 2012 Published by under Lab, Uncategorized

Overheard during job interviews in my lab:

-Lab Member: "Do you have experience in (particular technique)?"  Candidate: "No but I enjoy doing (hobby that has nothing to do with business).

-Lab Member: "So what skills from your current position do you think you can bring to our lab and contribute?"  Candidate: "Absolutely none!"  This may be true if your lab does completely different stuff, but at least come up with something.  Damn.

-PI gave job candidate some reprints of important papers from the lab, when asked by a lab member if they would read them, they responded, "If I get job?  Maybe."  Whaaaaaat?  Even if you aren't going to read them, lie to our face and say you will you dummy.

-Candidate: "So you guys don't work that hard right?  I don't really like to work that much."  Fuck me.

 

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International Laboratory Animal Technician Week!!!

Feb 01 2012 Published by under Lab

That's right folks its time to celebrate the folks that take care of the c. elegans, drosphilia, gallus gallus, Medaka, mus musculas, and everything inbetween.  So if you see any of the animal staff today, give em some knuckles and tell them good job.

By the way who sets these damn appreciation weeks?  I've got some ideas for new stuff to recognize.

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For Safety's Sake...

Jan 31 2012 Published by under Grad School, Lab, Safety

I'm sort of in a bit of a pickle here dear readers. I work with someone who while nice and a pleasant well-meaning coworker, they also have a less than stellar track record with respect to safety. They have committed no serious sins of safety but have numerous minor infractions and seemed to have to told repeatedly that they are not doing something the right way. Minor radiation contaminations throughout the lab, working with volatile chemicals outside the hood, and spinning unbalanced rotors (at not too high of speeds but high enough to make me really concern) seem to be the majority of their infractions.

I keep the lab manager apprised of what is happening and try to correct the person myself when ever I see them committing or about to commit an infraction. While no safety violation was a fireable offense, the culmination of these little offenses is starting to lead to a characterization of the person as sloppy and unsafe. I'm extremely concerned and pissed off with this individual after their latest gaffe that ended up affecting me (not seriously though luckily).

I'm sort of at my whit's end and don't really know what to do next. My PI is aware of most of the safety issues but I think they will always tend to push it underneath the rug.

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Labor Pains

Jan 03 2012 Published by under Grad School, Lab

You ever heard the old and slightly offensive saying, "Don't tell me about the labor pains, just show me the baby."  Well I currently trying to push through some very labor intensive experiments that will hopefully pay huge dividends for my project.  This could be a colossal bust though and the boss wants to see the baby (aka the data) ASAP.  I sometimes wonder if PI's lose touch with how long it takes to get some experiments done, nor am I faulting them for this.  I just find it interesting sometime how far they can be off the estimated time frame.

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The deletion test?

Dec 05 2011 Published by under Lab, LinkLove

A recent article in Nature talking about the HHMI's Janelia Farm Research Campus was quite interesting but has me a little aghast at a comment made by executive director Gerald Rubin.  Rubin says that Janelia Farm needs to be able to pass the "deletion test" in order to be considered a success.  The deletion test is analogous to knocking out a gene in order to determine its functions, so without the contributions of the might Janelia Farm what may we mere scientific plebes never have discovered.  I have not heard such hubris since the cocaine-laden days of the 1980s or more recently strategic planning by institutional presidents (we'll cure cancer in 10 years).  My skepticism in not to say that Janelia isn't a fantastic environment to foster scientific excellence or that they won't achieve great discoveries in the future, but my god man, temper your words.  Don't flap your gums and say crap like that you would consider yourself a failure if 20 years from now you find that you have just "..recreated the Salk Institute."

Oh and the nature article plots out the # number of glamour mag publications over the years coming out of Janelia Farm (I wouldn't expect anything less from the folks at Nature, or Science, or Cell).  So I guess if you are working at the farm its either go big or go home as well too?  I have high hopes for this place but don't start pissing matches by running your mouth.

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