This was attached to a message he just received:

Sigh. That's pretty basic.

But what's making Sid chortle like a 13 year old schoolboy is the part of the message that caused the warning:

Sorry. One of those Coon Cheese moments.

—"making stuff up as we go along".

(HT: Eva)

Yet other professions do not suffer from similar opprobrium. Lawyers, police, teachers, nurses all have sympathetic portrayals in popular entertainment. Even the sociopathic House, M.D. is a hero. The discrepancy is puzzling: after all, every mother believes her offspring is going to cure cancer—if they show any scientific proficiency at all. But in films scientists are usually either holding the world to ransom, creating unimaginable terrors or just generally stuffing things up. Similarly, the portrayal of science itself is lacking: although we think we have a pretty clear idea of police procedure or what happens in an emergency room, how, when it comes down to it, is science done?

Jennifer Rohn (a researcher at University College London, with a PhD in virology) started the online magazine LabLit.com to examine the portrayal of science and scientists in fiction, the media and popular culture: not so much to increase sympathy for the scientific profession but to raise general awareness.

Her first novel, Experimental Heart (CSHL Press), is firmly in this genre, the story narrated by a scientist whose life and concerns will be recognizable to many scientists and their families, and revealing to everyone else.

The plot is driven by an intrigue worthy of Dan Brown, with countless twists and turns and cleverly revealed clues. But at its heart this is not primarily a book about science, or evil machinations. It is a love story. Fast-paced, but with absorbing detail and wittily observed; from the first chance encounter to the dare-devil denouement it is the uncertainties of human emotion that provide the imperative to read on.

That is not to say the setting is incidental. The science—and there is a lot of it—is dealt with engagingly yet uncompromisingly. It is not for the faint-hearted, but Rohn manages to guide us through the maze of modern scientific endeavour, providing enough detail to satisfy the pedantic biologist while not allowing the laic to feel lost. And more than that: she confides in us, initiates us in the secrets of her trade; teaches without preaching; informs without condescending.

I'd come back upstairs […] around midnight to find poor Helmut slumped at his bench, fast asleep and murmuring vague German phrases about being attacked by molecules.

Andy O'Hara and his colleagues are real people. Helmut, the stereotypical German (whom Rohn never allows to lapse into slapstick), the keen student, the arrogant scientific superstar, the starry-eyed idealist—they're all here and every molecular scientist will recognize them. Similarly, the challenges faced by O'Hara and his colleagues are common to real scientists: including finding good parties and maintaining conversations with arts and humanities students. "Never even admit you're a scientist until the second date," one of his friends advises Andy.

Rohn writes wittily, even beautifully in places. I laughed out loud at the description of an argument—"the sequitur having got increasingly non"—and resonated with Rohn's description of antibodies as molecules that grasp their targets "with a lover's fervour". Arguments about genetic engineering and vivisection are dealt with sensitively and with incisive intelligence. This makes the the rather drawn-out ending and epilogue all the more puzzling, as if an over-zealous agent wanted to add more pages to the book. The back cover-promised abduction is so long in coming that I thought I'd missed it—and then it was so telegraphed it was no surprise.

But this is quibbling. The triumph and despair of the scientific endeavour are explored with fondness, as are other aspects: the almost parental pride and regret of teaching students and watching them become independent; the migratory lifestyle and its effect on relationships. There are strange coincidences—it seems improbable that Andy would discover Ainikka when he did: but this is how science happens. It's not strange or supernatural: as every good scientist knows, the wider you spread your net the more chance there is of that chance meeting that can change everything.

And here Rohn excels. Andy O'Hara is a scientist. He attempts to be rational, he treats his life as an experiment, tries to apply his sceptical and analytical thought processes to his personal life: with mixed results. He annoys the reader because he can not see what is plainly in front of him, will not, in fact, look at the evidence objectively—although he fools himself into thinking he is. This professional cynic's heart is not in it.

But this is the point. We get the sense that scientists are ordinary people, but doing extraordinary jobs. Andy O'Hara is a hero, but a beautifully flawed one. This is what makes the drama compelling. He is inconsistent: brilliant but stupid, rational but illogical: gloriously messy, gloriously human.

PS. One little detail didn't ring true. In our lab in Cambridge we would never use beakers from the wash-up cupboard when celebrating papers or grants. We drank champagne from 100 ml measuring cylinders.

As a result of the above changes, the staff will no longer be washing the cups
after morning and afternoon tea or the odd items of crockery left in the sinks
at lunchtime. Therefore, all staff and students will be responsible for
bringing their own cups and for washing them after use.

But interestingly,

New Honours students and new staff will be provided with new cups in their satchels.

How's that for incentivization?

But I'm not here to rag on poor, underpaid Canadian grad students, especially given their government's rather odd budget last week. I'm reminded instead of an email I received last June, just before I started all that travelling and finding new jobs malarkey.

Arthur asked if I

had any opinions the current state of DNA extraction kits -- there's quite a lot out there, with the no-pelleting Zyppy Zymo kit and the Chargeswitch of invitrogen -- is there still anything that can be done to make life easier for the world?

I have quite a simple answer to this question: save your money. Because as things stand, the kits do not save you time, they certainly do not save money, and they use extra plastics and resources and generally make life more complicated.

When you make plasmid DNA from bacteria you have to grow the bugs, spin them down, and resuspend them in a suitable volume. So far, everyone's doing the same thing. Then you lyse the bacteria (again, the kits use the same method as the traditional one) and separate out the plasmid DNA from everything else. Because of the clever alkaline lysis step, if you're careful what you have at this stage is plasmid DNA, RNA and protein. You have to get rid of two of those things: what the kits do is make the plasmid DNA stick preferentially to something, wash it clean and then take it off again. This involves a column/resin of some sort various wash buffers, an elution buffer. It also usually involves extra fiddly bits of plastic.

Traditionally you add isopropanol to get rid of the protein, and either don't worry about the RNA (adding RNase to the restriction digest works perfectly well for testing clones) or blast the prep with RNase and then clean up with phenol/chloroform: which admittedly is probably the most dangerous thing you'll come across in mol biol labs but you only use small amounts and it's easy to minimize the risk. It's cheap, and although you have to wait a bit for the spin steps the hands-on time is probably less than with the kits and you don't have to do all that faffing about with the spin columns and the centrifuge. It's also readily scalable, to give you the best quality DNA you could wish for. Caesium chloride? Don't make me laugh.

And until I get that one-step method working, my advice is not likely to change.

To answer Arthur's second question what's the markup on DNA prep kits?, about five to six-fold.

So, cheap and easy. Just as we like it.

There was a temporary power failure at MMB today (Monday) at about 3:30pm, lasting about 2 seconds. So, if you arrive Tuesday morning to find that some of your equipment/computers aren't quite right, this may be why.

Getting in this morning, I had to paddle to the office. There were vacuum cleaners, wet biohaz bags draped over computers and monitors (to keep the water inside, as far as I can tell), soggy piles of books, the assistant HoD instructing various Estates people to get here five minutes ago and people wandering around with their trousers rolled up. It was just like a day at Clacton.

We're on the sixth floor. The seventh is, if anything, worse. I daren't go up to the eighth.

The PC behind me was damp, but fortunately I came in to find my iMac happily sitting there waiting for me to log on. After checking that, I ran upstairs to check my HEKs. They are as happy as happy things, waiting for me to split them—and the cell hood seems functional too. In fact, all my stuff, like my sense of humour, is as dry as I imagined Australia to be (I'm not tanned after three years here: I've gone rusty).

But Alom has been stirring the pot:

Because if science teachers themselves do not have a convincing answer [...] it is hardly surprising if our students leave school without one.

There's actually the makings of an interesting argument going on in the comments—unfortunately people are quibbling about the meaning of 'science', 'everywhere' and 'is'. Now, I think that some of the readers of this weblog (as opposed to that one) might be able to contribute.

So, have a look—and don't be afraid to write in: Alom welcomes unsolicited answers to the question (if they're well-written and thoughtful, natch).

And... Happy New Year.

Me? I stand on (barefoot) on Eppendorf tubes on the floor of the toy room.

They hurt just as much.