lab life

Well I got an email from the Journal of Visualized Experiment (JoVE). Here's the key pitch: JoVE is a new open-source publication that allows free access to the latest biological research and experimental techniques in video format. Video-articles published in the second issue include a variety of complex experimental approaches ranging from stem cell transplantation to behavioral studies in Drosophila. These include experiments from the leading stem cell laboratories. Included in it's second issue is a video entitled Studying aggression in Drosophila (fruit flies) where you'll learn how to…
Over the weekend I posted a link to the Postdoc Carnival ... lots of good stuff in there including this entry from The Unbearable Lightness of Being A Postdoc on the woes of postdoc-hood. I also saw a nice post at Sunil's blog on What does it take to be a pioneering scientist? And there is a bit that is interesting, but while you read it I'd like you to think about the fine line between doggedness and dogma, it is one of the biggest chalenges that one faces as a scientist. How do you know when to give in and accept the death of your pet theory, and when should you ignore your negative result…
After bitching about how postdocs (and grad students) are treated like slave labor I stumbled onto these videos over at Omni Brain: and
OK it's time for a rant. (It's been a while.) Lets have a discussion about competitiveness in the lab-space. Yesterday over lunch, we had a discussion of all the nastiness going on within labs here at the medical campus. You know, people in the same lab competing against each other. This can escalate to overt hostility and even sabotage. These problems are very abundant, especially in a highly competitive environment like Harvard Medical School. The academic science establishment acts like a pyramid scheme where lots of grad students and postdocs work for almost nothing on risky projects…
OK a good friend and former colleague has induced me to get a Connotea account ... and I have to say that it's great. It's like a cross between Endnote and your bookmark page ... on steroids. If you don't know what Connotea is, it's a social bookmarking tool that lets you keep track of websites, files (such as online pdf files of scholarly articles) all while giving you the power of organizing these bookmarks with a single click of the button. One great feature is the ability of Connotea to extract all the info you need for any online publication simply by either adding a button to your…
Overheard in the lab: You can't just dump stuff into it. You know, it's not a truck. The ER is a series of tubes! If you have no idea what we're talking about, where have you been! OK I'll be a little less facetious ... watch this instructional video on the internet and tubes: And if you are wondering what was that from, it's a remix of this speech that Senator Ted Stevens gave sometime last year.
This is prompted by two emails. Both from good friends. Email #1 is from a friend who got Shingles, I think - (hope you get better, we'll all drink to your health Saturday during food-orgy ... I mean bookclub). The second email I received yesterday from a friend down in NYC asking me if I was still alive. It's good to know that I have at least two regular readers, although they are good friends first. So what is happening? I'm undergoing a severe case of last-experiment syndrome. (See this post, item #9). Friday: Injected my brains out in the morning. In the afternoon, after intense…
First the former Enron chief Jeffrey Skilling hired him, then ExxonMobil, now ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS? This ain't good. From Nature News: The consultant advised [Elsevier, Wiley and the American Chemical Society] to focus on simple messages, such as "Public access equals government censorship". He hinted that the publishers should attempt to equate traditional publishing models with peer review, and "paint a picture of what the world would look like without peer-reviewed articles". Dezenhall also recommended joining forces with groups that may be ideologically opposed to government-mandated…
Yeah, it's going to happen. From Corie Lok's blog: The 69-page report - PDF, submitted [Jan 11th] to the Boston Redevelopment Authority for review, proposes some pretty big changes to the Allston landscape. Here are the highlights: -putting part of Soldier's Field Road, the road that snakes alongside the river on the Boston side, underground -building a new footbridge -rebuilding and widening the existing Weeks pedestrian bridge to make room for bicycles and shuttles between the campuses -creating a new Harvard Square-like Barry's Corner at the corner of North Harvard Street and Western Ave…
This week I've spoken too much (I got to pitch my work to a couple of visiting seminar speakers), but written so little, so in some cosmic way my total quota of verbal diarrhea has been met. On top of that I haven't read a single paper in the last two weeks ... I've glanced at a few, but not really sat down and read. I haven't even flipped through the journals to see what's out there. Anything cool recently? (In the realm of cells and cellular biochemistry?) I haven't even thought about Map that Campus, although I'm tempted to place that feature on hiatus and start a new Friday feature. Any…
That must be how it is. It can't be any other way. Just prove it. Hilarious, n'est ce pas?
OK I'm a cell biologist. I spend my time at a 'scope (as we microscopists like to say). And I have one thing to say to you and only one thing ... my brain is fried. Here is my theory, if you sit in front of a microscope in the dark for more than four hours, energy is sucked out of your body, through your eyeballs and gets transferred to ... well I'm not sure. You are left feeling like a deflated Dictyostelium fruiting body that has let out all of its spores. This lost energy, where did it go? Perhaps it dissipates into pure thermal energy, or maybe it ends up in the secret place where all the…
Want to impress your fellow coworkers? Send your prettiest photos and micrographs to the European Molecular Biology Organization's Journal (aka EMBO Journal) and you may get your own EMBO J cover. Last year a grad student from our lab, got a couple of covers. For details read the following email: Dear authors and referees of the EMBO Journal, dear contributors to previous cover contests, dear friends and colleagues, The time has come again--we are happy and excited to announce another one of our annual contests: the one for the best scientific and non-scientific cover images for 2007. Please…
It looks like many cell biologists are ditching positions where they are at the mercy of decreased NIH funding for grants. Late last year Claire Waterman-Storer told me that this was in part why she moved from the Scripps to the NIH, where she would have a stable source of funding (no grant writing there!) Now I just found out that two big guys from Yale's excellent XX department will be departing soon ... one will be heading overseas, the other will be moving to the private sector. Things are not looking good. P.S. I would tell you who the big shots are, but the news isn't official ... and I…
A couple of weeks ago I was happy to see that Cell had launched a podcast. From my experience with Nature and Science, podcasts are a good way of keeping up-to-date with the latest papers published in these journals while performing mind numbing activities, like mini-preps or cell quantitation. Cell's podcast was great - with interviews (Craig Mello, Roger Kornberg, Paul Nurse ...) and a wrap up of some of last year's biggest findings. So I've been waiting, waiting, and waiting for the second podcast ... but it seems like it ain't comming. Whatzup Cell?
Yestetrday we recieved an email asking us to vote on the new coffee bar at the NRB (NRB = New Research Building = No rich person has yet donated money to Harvard Medical School for this structure) NAMING THE COFFEE BAR AT NRB (Vote for your favorite name) *Atoms *Carbon *Javium *Particles *Aliquots *Catalyst Café *CoffeeOmics *Eureka (café) *Synapse *Oasis (in my opinion they could have spiced up the list by replacing "Aliquotes" with "Ali-G-quotes")
... don't bet on it! I read far too many papers where the author claims that their favorite protein "localizes to the leading edge in migrating cells". Then they show a pretty picture like this one: The problem is that the cell thickens right at the leading edge. So if your protein is freely floating around, there will ALWAYS be more of it (in absolute terms) at the leading edge then in the nearby lamella. To underline this point, the image above is of fluorescent dextran microinjected into the cytoplasm of a fibroblast. Dextran is a molecule that is certainly not a marker of the leading…
Here's a happiness scale for you (based loosely on this book). The listed numbers act as a point of reference: 10- Incredible result that explains all the data amassed by a field and resolves various conflicts between different models. 9.5- Fantastic result, all your pet theories are proven. 9- Great result indicating that you may have something interesting. 8.5- You've repeated that great result, it looks pretty solid. 8- You've successfully cloned a gene. 7- You're not sure, but your result might indicate that you have something interesting. 5- Making buffers. 4.5- Passaging cells in the…
Time for a therapy session. Man I hate this. My cortisol levels must be through the roof. I tested my clones and got weird results. I was racking my brain all weekend trying to figure out why. Then yesterday I tested a positive control, and got negative results. I feel like I'm trapped in the twilight zone. (I would have rather been at the ASCB meeting.) What to do? One advice that I got long time ago - if things don't work anymore, throw away all your reagents and start all over. It's the best advice that anyone has ever given me. So today I'm doing exactly that.
... is with me. Two constructs to make. Two colonies I had. Each trial a single clone. I cut them, they cut just the way I hoped. Each clone was sequenced. The sequence told me that I have what I need. Although my hopes were low, I did succeed. And now the clones are sent into the fire ... Will they do my bidding? Will they tell me the truth? (I feel like Nick Cave) PS Cloning = make an exact copy, in this case a DNA construct. Actually what I did was construct a a gene on a DNA vector and then introduce the newly made reagent into bacteria so that the cells would copy the novel DNA…