10.30 am Saturday, May 16th

The plan: A five-minute visit to the lab to pull out an over-crowded plate of colonies.

The reality: A plate with nothing on it and no plan.

Adios amigos! The California sunshine beckons. I am off to play frisbee now.

Murphy's law

The irony of being super-cautious and over-sequencing is this. On most days, doing the prudent thing of confirming the sequence of a new template before beginning any manipulation on it only means twiddling thumbs and restless waiting to find all isolates qualifying the test. On the rare occassion you really, really (really) cannot afford the day's wait and decide to say a prayer and go ahead? Turns out Murphy patiently waited his turn to pounce on you in your weakest moment with that savage law of his; with a victorious grin and an 'I said so' on the tip of his tongue, he dances a merry dance in your dreams, nay nightmares. Don't be fooled by brightly shining bands looking neat and tidy on a gel , or by copious amounts of colonies on a plate. The experiment you raced to finish on time will confirm your worst fears- the isolate was dead all along. It was the one sample that had failed QC, you found out a day late.

14 tranformations and much pipetting later, I got 3 colonies yesterday! Whoohoo!...Only I need 57 more. :(

Just saying hello

I decided to start a blog to record my frustrations and gleanings from research and life in the Molecular Biology lab. So here goes.