Life of a Lab Rat

Bull, meet red rag.

Coogee , n.
A popular beachside suburb and locality in the Eastern suburbs of Sydney. The original name is Bogangar, from the Bandjalang (Aboriginal) word meaning 'place of many hippies'.

A couple of warning messages about the new operating system from Microsoft came around on the Cage's email list last week. This list is used for everything from requests for reagents through student barbecue notifications to warnings about the bloody deionized water system. The message from our IT guys is "do not install Vista". Which is rather funny, actually, and I replied to the list suggesting that people should not boot Windows at all, because they would be more productive that way.

Fast forward to yesterday and I'd come across this website (again. It's been a while), and I thought what the heck, it's Friday, let's cheer some people up — and emailed the link to the departmental mailing list, with a covering note about how we all needed to be prepared both at home and while travelling, blah.

cabarita , n.
A device in an internal combustion engine for mixing air with a fine spray of liquid fuel.

Cage water crisis worsens:

Heather is whinging about her spectrophotometer. The 'spec' is a machine that shines light of a defined wavelength through a sample and measures how much is absorbed. It returns a quantity known as 'absorbance' or (incorrectly) 'optical density' ('OD'). This is useful to us because the amount of light absorbed is directly proportional to how much stuff there is. Furthermore, different stuff absorbs different wavelengths of light.

So, to pick a completely non-random example, you could make some DNA, put some in a cuvette (the sample vessel, of a defined size) and analyse it in the spec by shining light of wavelengths 260 nanometres (nm) and 280 nm (these are far ultra violet wavelengths) through it. You would find out how much DNA you have, because there is a simple formula that relates absorbance at 260 nm to concentration, and how much contaminating protein there is, because (most) protein absorbs light with a wavelength of 280 nm.

Thus you can therefore measure protein concentration, or follow a colorimetric reaction by observing at the appropriate wavelength, and so on. A spectrophotometer is a very useful instrument, very simple in principle, these days very easy to use, and a source of great frustration to many.

Lorne - the Not a Conference Report Part II

I have seen, and sometimes even read, conference reports in society magazines (that is, publications from for example the British Society for Cell Biology, not Marie Claire or Hello etc.) and on weblogs. And I have but one thing to say.

If you have time to write a weblog from a conference, then you were not really there.

Enough said. Lorne is a blast. It is a reasonably-sized affair, with about 450 delegates, 15 lecture sessions of three or four speakers each, three poster sessions and a gorgeous beach, all in the space of about four days. Everyone seems to know each other, and if they don't they soon will. Many, and I would guess around seventy percent, are Lorne junkies, coming back year after year.

It is pretty hardcore, with most talks showing some structural information even if not describing a new protein structure. This can be hard work, even for someone who likes looking at models of proteins and nucleic acid. Drop off for a moment in the middle of a 30 minute talk and it's very difficult to pick up the thread again. It most be hell for any cell biologists who happened to drop by.

It is not all tough going. Scientists tend to play as hard as they work, whether it be partying with old and new friends until four in the morning, surfing or playing cricket. There will nearly always be someone in the bar arguing excitedly and animatedly with a collaborator, someone else clowning with or tormenting a rep at her trade display, and at least half a dozen people in the reception area tapping away on their laptops or making last-minute adjustments to their slides. Business cards are handed over and scribbled upon, and on at least one occasion I saw a couple take themselves apart to exchange rather more intimate details.

Every delegate will have had with a different impression of the conference, and if you were to ask which was the best part you would probably get four hundred different answers. For most of us I think the worst would probably have to be the lunches and refreshments prepared by the resort. I hasten to add that no blame can be attached to the conference organizers. But whoever thought that jam and egg rolls, or warm Carlton draught, was a good idea should be forced to — well, I can not think of a suitable punishment, but I am open to ideas. Just don't get me started on the tea. Earl Grey that tasted of Lapsang? Oh, and the difference between the vegetarian and normal lunches (apparently) was that if there was a roll containing meat, it was removed. Not substituted, removed.

I managed to come away with the promise of two useful reagents, several handy ideas, some interesting contacts and a whole bunch of crazed Kiwi friends. And the Quantum rep's business card. Yes, I know, I'm married; but this is one hell of a way to get girls' phone numbers. I also got a good photograph of a koala and a suntan. The organizers schedule the talks and posters from 0830 until 1300, and then from 1600 to 2200 with a break for dinner, which essentially means that the afternoons are free. And if the weather is good, you can go surfing or koala-spotting, or both. I like this game.

I can probably squeeze out a third report, that hopefully will be a bit more sciencey, but it will have to wait.

Back in Cambridge there was a sign above the washing-up trolley. I forget the exact wording, but the gist was that only clean glassware was to go into the washing up. Similarly, I have a friend who will clean everything before it goes into the dishwasher. Everything. In drought-stricken Canberra, this seems a bit odd to me.

I mean, get rid of sharks and crocs, yes, but to rinse everything before it goes into the dishwasher, which rinses everything before it does anything else. . .

That's not a problem in Sydney these last twenty four hours. It has been wet, very wet here. Water, water everywhere/And all the postdocs did shrink — except in the Cage, where

There are problems with the RO water in the building again, please avoid using the RO & Milli -Q Water over the weekend.

<sigh>

wingello, n.
Originally a flavour of ice cream, now a small shed where men can go to cry when Australia loses a sporting event. Rare.

Lorne — the Not a Conference Report Part I

This is a pretty high-profile conference, at least within the protein world. We get some clever people speaking, or at least people powerful enough to swing a trip to Australia on their grant money. The fascinating thing is that the ability to perform cracking science and raise grant money does not necessarily correlate with the ability to give a good seminar.

So, for example, the medal lecture on the first evening was given by someone who, I'm assured, is a good man and a great scientist and humble and helpful (I spoke to someone who did a PhD in his department and then moved into sales. I found such hagiography from a sales rep a little disconcerting, but I'm happy she felt that way). I have no doubt he governs his lab well. The state of his talk, however, was more suited to an audience of medics (given the number of mice and rats that he must have killed) rather than scientists. I'm sure it would have been fascinating for endocrinologists but the title of this conference is "Protein Structure and Function". I am all for the contextualization of protein structure and function; after all, not recognizing the roles and implications of our work in a wider physiological setting is a major failing of our sub-genre, but I feel this was too much context and not enough science.

Maybe it's a culture clash thing — medics and scientists tend to be very scathing of one another. After all, the two groups have completely different goals. However, it was interesting to eavesdrop up on the whispered conversations as we left the conference hall and realize that the question on everyone's lips was "What's a sham castration?".

One of these daysyears I am going to get a poster finished a week before the conference.

Let's see: Conference starts on Sunday, my poster is due to be on display Monday afternoon. The preceding Thursday lunchtime I am still doing an experiment and have not started work on the poster. All the rest of Thursday I design and draw a single figure. That leaves Friday to complete the poster, because my children will probably divorce me if I am not at home the Saturday before I disappear to Melbourne for a week.

cronulla, v (esp as cronullared adj)
form into alternate ridges and grooves, wrinkle.

e.g. If you do not stretch out the cellophane tightly enough, it will cronulla when you wet it and become totally croydon.

Like an aestivating salamander, the lab is dormant. Not asleep, but prepared; waiting.

Come with me, and see the benches standing expectantly; ploughed furrows ready to receive whatever seed the new year's influx of students may bring. A centrifuge grumbles, then steadies as it accelerates through and past the zone of instability. The chunka hunka chunka of a single shaking incubator adds to the feeling that here are hidden, but powerful, energies lying just behind the door of a freezer.

And see, here in the offices: Slowly the regulars return from Christmas break, one occasionally breaking out to reconnoitre old battlegrounds and promising new vistas. But what is this? The place is alive, but with the silent beat of poster preparation.