Back to consciousness
One of my favorite parts of my lab is the good-humored people that are my lab mates. Today we initiated Brian, our new post-doc in the lab, by subjecting him to a variety of interesting music selections that we've come across over the last year.
It's amazing what a little sleep will do for productivity. Even getting up early this morning so that I could be in lab before 8 am didn't seem so bad. I wanted to start some lab work before our weekly lab meeting.
Every Tuesday at 9:30 am, the three labs located in the basement of the Fairchild Building get together to hear one of the lab members present their research and get feedback. Our labs are lovingly referred to as the Bug Dungeon... we study bacteria and work in the basement.
I was first drawn to these labs because of Dr. Stanley Falkow whose reputation as a leading infectious disease expert is well known. Since joining the Bug Dungeon, I've been even more impressed with Denise Monack and Manuel Amieva, who head the labs. Having first-hand knowledge of any pathogen and any means of studying them is a resource I couldn't imagine having anywhere else.
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Trevor, a post-doc in the lab and resident Canadian (see photo), was partial to the song Magical Trevor for obvious reasons.
I highly recommend that everyone check it out, but I warn you: you'll be singing along without even thinking about it by the third time through. Make sure you watch the Flash animation that goes with it.
Greg, another post-doc, preferred to share the musical stylings of a former exchange student in the lab. Imagine 1960's rock done with a German accent and synthesizer music. Oh, how we miss Stefan. I think Brian, the new post-doc, got a good idea of what life in the Bug Dungeon is going to be like... hopefully that's a good thing :)
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Even with all this goofing around, today was a really busy day in lab. Busy days are good days, though, because they mean things are working. Lazy days mean that something didn't go right and so you're just sitting around.
Today was day two of working with Dave on my microarray experiment. Dave is a great guy and a talented scientist, but only he can decipher the organization of his bench (see photos). I guess as the saying goes: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And with all he gets done, I'd say it's working out pretty well for him.
Dave and I have used a collection of random Francisella tularensis mutants to find genes required for different bacterial processes. He is looking for the ability to cause infection, while I am looking for the generation of bacterial communities, called biofilms.
On my end, I individually screened 13,500 mutants over the course of two months to see if they could form biofilms. Without going into great scientific detail, the microarrays that Dave and I are working on will tell us what genes we should focus our future research on. After months of prep work and screening, it's really exciting that I could have results as early as Friday. I'll keep you posted on how things go. Keep your fingers crossed for me.
After work today, I was supposed to go rock climbing with friends from my class. I don't know how I got started on this sport since I'm deathly afraid of heights, but I've come to really enjoy it. It's definitely a different way to get exercise and who knows maybe it'll eventually give me some upper body strength.
Having arrived in lab at 7:45 am and having left at 7:15 pm I was ok with people canceling. This way I can save my strength for IM soccer tomorrow, another sport I'm trying to pick up. So instead of heading off to the gym, I returned home for my favorite night of TV.
The eternal question for Lacey and I on Tuesdays is "Scrubs" or "House". It's ironic that the only two shows that I make a point to watch are on at the same time this season. We usually go with "House" if we want something thought provoking or "Scrubs" if we're in the mood for something lighter.
Tonight was a "House" night. I love this show because I like to think through the diagnoses with the doctors. Lacey sometimes yells at me because I scream at the TV, especially when the episode is about an infectious disease. Maybe I should have gone for my MD instead of PhD, but then there's that whole hating-blood-and-gore thing. Oh well.
Tonight's episode was about a mother of a young infant who was hearing voices and wound up killing the child per the voices' encouragement. In the end, House figures out that the mother isn't crazy, instead she has a gluten allergy that damaged her digestive system and caused her to be malnourished and in turn become delirious.
Although quite morbid, I thought the show raised some interesting issues. Medically, it wasn't the mother's fault that she did what she did because she was delirious from her illness. Regardless, the new mom refused treatment out of guilt and the dad blamed the mom for what happened. Can either of these people not blame the mom for the baby's death? If I were the father, it would be hard for me not to hold my wife responsible even though I know it wasn't a conscious decision. Although I enjoyed the episode, I'm glad this was only a show. Maybe next week I'll watch "Scrubs" :)
Posted at 10:01 PM
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