One of these vials contains: a concentrated solution of denatured proteins; elemental and polyatomic ions; deoxyribonucleotides; a bit of RNA for good measure; and freshly replicated DNA strands that, when visualized on a polyacrylamide gel, will provide the final evidence confirming the hypothesis of a seventh year PhD student. The other contains water.
Life Science students spend a lot of time worrying: worrying about grades; whether or not to buy the $150 textbook for the ‘suggested’ readings; residence life (in a few cases); relationships (in even fewer cases); and grades. But there is something else we should be banging our heads against the biosafety cabinet about: the nature of biomolecular research.
I may not be saying anything new, but a significant portion of Life Sci students do some kind of lab research. You’ve probably already heard plenty of negative things about the long hours, thankless lab mates, inconclusive results, and distant profs, but I want to share some other aspects of lab research that you may not hear about until it’s too late.
This machine will become your new best friend. Without it, there are no numbers for science to work with!
Biomolecular research consists of mixing one colourless solution with another by pipetting miniscule volumes. Labeling these vials of clear, colorless, odorless liquid results in 80% of your time being spent with permanent markers, so prepare to sniff plenty of fumes.
After properly mixing all your nondescript liquids and labeling them (don’t forget today’s date!), you place these liquids in a complicated half-a-million-dollar machine designed by some corporate engineers. As far as we’re concerned, the real magic happens inside this machine and it just poops out numbers on a monitor. These numbers are then processed by a grad student’s statistics software and voila! You have results.
There isn’t anything particularly wrong with this situation – it’s just the way it is. Think of it as one more strange and unusual environment we undergrads must persevere. And, for those who do, honour and glory await (or at least your chequing account is $4000 richer thanks to that summer grant)!
Why move colourless liquids when you could play with worms!!! Yes that’s right, live animals with no ethics clearance or training! They grow egg to adult in 3 days, perfect timeline for an undergrad project, second only to yeast! If you need time off, they can live for >3months in a dauer larval state! Complicated genetics? Hell no, they clone themselves! Perfect for studying the evolution of selfing vs sex, pheromones, behaviour you name it! Apply to your departmental worm lab today and never look back at med school!!!
Quite true, quite true. When I realized that micro-pipettes weren’t my thing, I tried to move out to think that have a broader social context, like health and disease.
While I can’t say that these skills are useless in fields like healthcare, Life Sci students are al trained to be researchers, or so it seems in the first two years. Like you said, it’s just the way it is.
^So true. When you run the same PCR reaction fifty times and each time no bands show up, you start to wonder about two things:
a) will I get in trouble for wasting so much Taq polymerase and
b) what’s the point?
Did you have Dansereau for BIO240?
Taq Polymerase: The answer to all PCR problems.
I did have Dansereau for BIO240. He had a muppet-like voice and everyone loved how silky smooth and shiny his hair was.
Did you know that some of my classmates this past year actually emailed him and asked him what shampoo he used? I think there was a thread on it on either biome or uthub… I don’t remember if it was before biome closed down or after.
Apparently he replied with the chemicals of the stuff that make up shampoo.
That’s hilarious! I can only imagine what the sent him
“Dear Dr. Dansereau:
I am a student in your Bio240 lecture and enjoy the material very much, especially feedback regulation of the lac operon. Although this may extremely sound strange and borderline inappropriate, many of my classmates and I are taken aback by your the shininess and smoothness of your head hair. May we inquire as to what shampoo product you use?
Thank you for your time,
Frizzled Hair”
There was a thread on biome. It’s too bad really, we can’t even see the forums anymore.
Seriously?! I thought they were going to leave the old forums intact (but locked) so that we can look back. There was a lot going on there. There was some comic gold in there.
I think your mock message isn’t too far off the mark. I remember someone reading it aloud to me, and it sounded something like that…
Check it out: http://biome.utoronto.ca/
It must be buried somewhere on some server. Maybe this would make an interesting article….