This week at the Arizona Biomedical Collaborative was kind of hectic.
On Monday, I ran some more Wes plates with my secondary adviser Caitlin. I ran plates for the second half of the samples from the S1BF region of mice brain samples. My results indicated that the run was completed successfully as compared to the disastrous run of the same plate a few days ago. After I completed the Wes plates, I took a break for lunch and organized my notebook and my materials.
On Tuesday, things went perfectly for the first time since I came to the lab. That day, I had to run another wes plate with Sarah, and within a matter of minutes everything was set up, the rest of the process went as smoothly as it could, and we were done by lunchtime. After that, I worked on organizing the lab and Sarah's lab notebook, which was very messy and all over the place. Overall, it was a pretty relaxed day without much craziness.
Wednesday, on the other hand, was a complete disaster. I got to prepare a wes plate by myself for the first time, and I was really excited. However, I was making mistakes from the get-go till the end. Every step that I could mess up, I did. At the end of it all, the results looked like an ekg that went wild. I would have looked at it as an opportunity to learn from all the possible mistakes that I could make, but considering how much the plate itself costs, plus the materials that were put into the plate and the time it took to the raise the mice before removing their brains, it was kind of hard to focus on anything but the cost.
On Thursday, at the weekly lab meeting, I learned again what not to do in lab studies along with learning some new facets of the medical industry. Overall, I had a very light work day, and after doing some organizing and setting a wes plate for my senior advisor, Sarah, to run, I called it a day.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI really like how you add a realistic aspect to research every week! Good to know that some of the results are coming through! What do the results of the test that you're running look like?
ReplyDeleteWow, Rohith! Your post clearly demonstrates just how much the lab environment is subject to change! What would you estimate the costs of the different variables to be? Are plates at all reusable?
ReplyDeleteAnd, simply out of curiosity, how long does it take to actually raise a mouse?
Wow! It looks like you're certainly experiencing every extreme of the world of research. What do the results look like to show you that the run was successful?
ReplyDeleteLooks like you had quite the learning experience! It's alright though, at my internship I have made plenty of mistakes. We just keep trucking. Hope that next week goes even better
ReplyDelete