If you are not an absolute geek, look away now.
As for the rest, have any of you ever visited the Royal Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh? I first had the pleasure one summer long ago when I ran away from home on an ultimately ill-fated romantic mission, but ended up falling in love with their superlative Science and Industry collection instead. Since then, I’ve been back several times. You wander the hushed shadowy halls peering at the objects behind the glass and feel humbled by the weight and beauty of the history of science crowding just over your shoulder: astrolabes, sextants, microscopes, difference engines, compasses, telescopes; everything chrome and brass, copper and bronze, gold and steel, knurled and sculpted and buffed like an artefact out of a Philip Pullman novel.
Swanky kit: Goes from zero to sixty in ten seconds
They don’t, I’m afraid, make them like they used to. I was thinking about this the other day when I had to do a bit of microbiology, the first since resuming my career as a bench scientist. I wanted to inoculate some bacteria into broth, so asked around the lab to see who could lend me a platinum loop. No joy. So I trekked, then, around the institute, asking people at random: I either got baffled looks, or people saying, “Well, I always just use a yellow Gilson tip”.
A yellow Gilson tip? This is what happens when you earn your PhD in an old-fashioned, God-fearin’ American Microbiology department: you become really fussy about your instruments. (You also feel reluctant to drink from anyone else’s glass for the duration of your thesis, but that’s another story.) I don’t feel I am doing justice to sterile technique with disposable plastic: once the box has been opened, the masses of amp-resistant bacteria swirling around our lab are bound to encroach. Besides, there is satisfaction and ritual in the dousing of the wire into the alcohol, the purifying flame of the gas burner, the sizzle of the molten loop in the cool agar or broth. I was never one of these cavalier plate scribblers, either: no, my streak-outs would be conducted in the strict three-area method with colonies isolated to perfection.
Dear Reader, I purchased that platinum loop and holder. A really swanky, expensive one from Fisher Scientific, with a wonderful heft and weight to it, and a wire that sizzled like a fine sports car.
It felt wonderful.
[...splutter] dipping it in alcohol? That’s just for show offs. Nothing more effective than getting it good and red hot. And as for holders…well in my day you were just fast enough not to burn your fingers. Takes a good 10-15 seconds before the handle gets really hot.
And surely you’ve missed the crucial point? You need two loops. One to use while the other is cooling down…but you tell the students that today, and they won’t believe you.
I take it you are not the pyromaniac that I am, Cameron. And you must be absolutely useless at Christmas Pudding.
Ah, no, christmas pudding is an entirely different thing. Requires extensive soaking in 70% ethanol to prevent any nasty fruit borne bacteria surving. But you need a much bigger bunsen to set the pudding alight…
The image…God, Cameron, do you wear safety goggles?
You see, this is what happens when you let a bioinformatician[0] loose in the lab (or, it appears, kitchen).
It’s mayhem.
0 I really should put that word in my dictionary.
I know, it’s sad, isn’t it? No respect for the proper protocols.
Well, we’re not in Silico any more, buster.
Yeah. And they have no appreciation for the art.
A platinum loop is a joy for ever. No one else is allowed near mine.
{Descends into yet deeper geekiness}
I saw they also came in cheaper stainless steel, the wires, but couldn’t bring myself to do it.
Yegods. I think I’d rather drink instant coffee.
I think the bioinformaticians might be unimpressed if you are trying to put me into that category. Never written a line of code in my life. Proper lab scientist me…well alright I’m an academic. I generate emails and word documents and occassionally my group allows me into the lab as long as I don’t create too much havoc.
But I can cook.
My mistake, Cameron.
Can’t have the hired help back-chatting, eh?
Today’s microbiology lesson: if you can cook, you should know that Christmas Pud is essentially sterile not due to any alcohol or flaming, but mostly from the high sucrose concentration.
Salt would also work, but would taste pretty alarming.
(- Extracted from ‘101 useless things you learn doing a PhD in a God-fearin’ American microbiology department’.)
Yes, that’s what my students say…
Yes, but you need an excuse to soak the christmas pudding in all that brandy. And that one’s always worked for me.
What? Who needs an excuse?
We’re scientists, dammit. That’s all the excuse one should need. Ever.
Yeh, well you try telling my little sisters that.
Start ‘em young, mate: train ‘em proper.
Back then, our Micro department housed one lone ex-pat British lecturer. Under her guidance, every year, the media room staff prepared a huge steaming 40-gallon stainless steel tank of Christmas Pudding – in the autoclave.
Now that was a sight.
Sounds rather Goon-ish, to me.
That reminds of the time we had a huge plastic tank come into the lab. No-one could figure out who ordered it or what it was for. Then it vanished briefly and reappeared near the autoclave. Turned out someone had ordered it to make beer, then found out it didn’t fit in the autoclave.
Richard – I’ll name that episode in one! Alas i don’t have it on mp3, so The Beast will have to be subjected to some unseasonal silliness this evening.
sigh Amateurs
Ah, we’d file that one under ‘101 surprisingly useful things you learn doing a PhD in a God-fearin’ American microbiology department’.
Working in a zoology museum, platinum loop thingies are thin on the ground. What we had was stuffed animals.
Working one day in the freezing cublicle known as the grad-student lab, an assertive knock was heard at the door. We opened it to find a soldier in uniform.
“I’ve come about this ‘ere gnu”, he said.
Rapid inquiries revealed that a regiment of Britain’s bravest was about to have its annual dinner, and had hired the zoology museum’s stuffed gnu as its
postprandial entertainmenttable decoration. I wish I’d had a photo of the specimen concerned being wheeled into the horsebox in the quad. Especially as the foam padding taped round its horns, for protection, made it look like Ena Sharples.Ha! Hahaha. I almost swallowed my own tongue.
Thanks Henry, you’ve made a great day even greater.
Always happy to oblige
Oh, please to stop the hurting…
Have I mentioned my sexy loop?
Have I mentioned my sexy loop?
[thinks] I have a feeling that this might be one of those questions that women ask men, and which men should think about very carefully before answering.
At least I didn’t ask you if my loop looked big in this.
Henry, are you going to blog more about your days in the zoology museum? Your fans want more.
Would you two like to get a room?
[sounds of semi-masticated weetabix hitting the screen]
Not very microbiologically sound, that.
But look at the spread…
OK. Point taken. I can’t see single colonies.
Single flakes of weetabix perhaps…[eeeewww!]
p.s. I’d make a rude comment about Richard posting rude comments on the wrong blog, except I know I’d put it on the wrong….oh b**r
You boys need to sort yourselves out. Don’t know how to handle all this new-fangled technology, the lot of you.
Okay, you can come out now, I’ve wiped off the weetabix.
You boys need to sort yourselves out. Jennifer, asking boys to rhapsodize about their instruments is to court disaster. Here’s my instrument, and very impressive it is too.
Not bad Henry. Here’s mine
Jenny, I suggest you look away now. Your salon is descending into a locker-room contest in which the boys compare the sizes of their organs.
Yes indeed, it will be red sports’ cars next. (No hyphen, as both red and sports’ describe car, correct? Only use hyphens to describe a noun if there is a potential ambiguity as in the famous camp (-) followers of science, I think?)
I defer to your superior wisdom Maxine (as it was you who taught me how to sub-edit (subedit?)
Ooh. I have a red sports car.
(A little concerned about your apostrophe, Maxine. Just how many sports does your car do?)
((That being the clean version of that joke))
I confess to pondering on the apostrophe, too. sport’s or sports did not seem correct. ? We need Charles Wenz, Nature’s Managing Production Editor, who apparently is a “petrolhead” as well as the best grammarian I’ve ever encountered. (I may indeed have taught Henry, but Charles taught me.)
Well Maxine, according to Sniff Petrol , that epitome of motoring journalism, there are “sports coupe”s, so by extension, “sports car”.
Logically, “sports’ car” implies a car that belongs to ‘sports’. Which is giving me the totally wrong impression. It is a car for being sporty.
Now ‘sport’ is beginning to look (and sound) weird to me so I’ll stop.
Sport sport sport.
I go off to do some work for two seconds and look what happens.
Please, Miss, we need discipline. We need punishment.
Oh pleeeease.
Anyone want to talk about bacteria? Anyone at all?
You’re worried that your sexy loop isn’t getting the attention it deserves?
The steering wheel on this thing doesn’t seem to be working.
Try this one, then.
Jennifer – that round thing may not be a steering wheel.
Take care, Jenny, you’re doing that damsel-in-distress thing again, so that us poor hapless XYs will feel no option but to exercise our imperative to come to your rescue and tell you where the steering wheel is, not to mention changing the tyres, topping up the brake fluid and similar masculine activities that involve much standing about scratching one’s chin and saying things like “I wonder if I can use a five-sixteenths socket on that?” and many, many trips to The Shed.
You say that like it’s a bad thing, Henry.
Au contraire, Richard. I love going to my shed.
bites tongue
That’s nice, Henry.
I was referring to the steering wheel on this bloody thread topic. But it’s a fascinating insight into your psyches all the same, gentlemen.
On the subject of sheds, I remember putting one up from a kit in my garden, with a friend. It didn’t take long, even when my friend nearly dropped a large panel after I’d remarked on my disappointment on discovering that cottaging wasn’t nearly as exciting a pastime as I’d imagined. Oh dear – I think the steering wheel has well and truly come off now, Jenny.
I had a psyche once, Jenny, but it died.
Well, Richard, it’s your own fault. These things need to be fed and watered every now and then, not to mention being cleaned out and given regular exercise. And science has proved that psyches can simply pine away from boredom if not given enough sensory stimulation.
i just read your last few posts – and Jenny, really, you’re just not as old as you seem to think you are.
Although growing up clearly doesn’t preclude one from a bit of schoolboy humour.. ;)
Jenny, really, you’re just not as old as you seem to think you are.
If I were you, Jenny, I’d take that as a compliment.
I think.
and Jenny, really, you’re just not as old as you seem to think you are.
@Richard – just between us two blokes, whether in a shed or not, do you think that counts as a ‘does-my-bum-look-big-in-this’ moment?
No!
Sorry, what was the question?
Young Thomas! How sweet of you to say.
Although it was easier to feel young when I had to look at you lot every day.
xxx
Oooh, in’t she bold?
I don’t believe it’s been four years since I’ve done microbiology. And yes, we had loops too. Now I feel old. :’(
...[edit] And we used to do the double ethanol-and-flame thing too. damn I miss that.
Embrace your inner microbiologist.
I’m not a microbiologist, but may be interested in hugging other microbiologists. Apply without.
You also feel reluctant to drink from anyone else’s glass for the duration of your thesis, but that’s another story.
And may I just mention that that is a story that we would like to hear, as your dearest readers?
Hmmmm. Give me a hug, Scott, and it’s a deal.
x
You owe me a new keyboard.
73 comments so far. Hhmm. Is it possible that Jenny is on course now for back to back centuries ??
You may have beaten me last time, Dr Steel, but no longer! Take that!!!
Damn you Moriarty.
You leave me with little alternative than to unleash this monster.
Do your worst, you fiend!
Ha ha,
May I let you in to a little secret my dear friend. When you were away in Africa
you fool, I was busy training my latest recruit, The Fingers. She will rip you apart in a microsecond.With that out of the way, I suppose we should get this thread back on the rails comments wise. Sorry for the digression.
Goodbye Moriarty.
Cripes. Carry On
CampingCleoUp The KhyberWayward Son. Incredible. But what really got me was the beret/feather-boa combo. Truly awe-inspiring.No, really. Carry on. It’s lovely.
Oh, you are alive. I thought this had turned into a Gee Steel (who, if he isn’t, should be the hero of a 60s spy film) lovefest.
hero of a 60s spy film? Hhmm. No wonder I was so keen to visit the International Spy Museum in DC a couple of years ago. Highly recommended.
—
Jenny, I’ve only been to the Royal Musuem in Scotland once – last Sept for a Gala Dinner. As you may know, Dolly the Sheep is on display
there.
Given the ‘mixed success’ of Dolly, I was a but surprised to see her on display. Baaa humbug.
I think I saw a sweater knitted from Dolly’s fleece on display at the Science Museum, once. Alongside one of the first genetically modified tomatoes. A curator I’d come to interview was not particularly pleased when I pointed out that the tomato on display had actually gone mouldy. Shelf life only goes on for so long, even when you’re genetically modified.
Q – Cloned sheep, cloned sheep, have you any wool?
A – Yes Sir, yes Sir 3,543 bags full…...plus a jar of Wilmut’s moldy tomato sauce!
I missed Dolly! What a shame. But when I used to work in Leiden, the Netherlands, I would commute every day on my second bicycle past a pen containing two GM bulls, engineered to express growth hormone. They were each the size of a small lorry. I think they were on display to make people feel better about science. Not sure it was working, to judge by the reactions I saw.
When I was in my last year of undergrad (1998) I interviewed in several labs in Edinburgh for PhD studentships in genetics. Every single scientist I met had a photo of themselves with Dolly on their desk or bench.
Of course, the big question is: why bother cloning a sheep when they all look the same anyway?
I’ll chip in so as to boost your figures. Just thinking back to the beginning of your post, and trying to think what my favorite tools were/are. I am quite fond of electrolytically sharpening tungsten microsurgery needles, and the platinum electrodes for electroporating eggs aren’t bad either.
I like diamonds, too.
I tried out a new toy today: the NanoDrop. Forgive me if this is old news to everyone else, but this baby takes a tiny droplet of your DNA onto a titanium microplatform and
tells your fortunequantitates it for you in about three seconds. I was in raptures!OK, OK - so we is now up to comment 88.
I am no lab person so I squeak from my own angle.
What did I most like that year musically, hhmm.
Peter Gabriel & Kate Bush – Don’t Give Up
I used to be enchanted with it, too, until it started giving us regularly lower-than-real doses with low concentrations of RNA. Make sure the little electrode thing is scrupulously clean – splurge with 5 ul of water a couple of times – and also, apply 1.2 ul and don’t work in a warm closet, like we used to do!
But it’s just great when you have lots of samples.
I tried out a new toy today: the NanoDrop. I am, actually, insanely jealous. The most complicated piece of equipment I used during my entire Ph.D. was a set of vernier calipers. (I used the university mainframe, too, but I guess that doesn’t count).
Maybe that’s why my yield was so anemic. The tech who showed me said that sometimes it needs to be ‘conditioned like a fine wok’ with effusive rubbing. That sounded so rude I didn’t dare inquire further!
Before this discussion hits another milestone, I want to mention my favorite piece of equipment. As I work in a hospital, we of course have the machine that makes ping.
No. God no, please no Python. {Whispers: because then Gee will show up, and…}
Given the ‘mixed success’ of Dolly, I was a but surprised to see her on display. Baaa humbug.
So we should only have our successes on display in a museum? Dolly is iconic, and should definitely be on display. Though when I went to see her last, I found something quite forlornly tragic about Dolly, gazing out passively as she rotates in a little plastic box, complete with sheep droppings and straw.
Oh, I heart the nanodrop.
Jenny, Martin has, in the inimitable German fashion, the machine that makes ‘ping’.
Be nice, you.
That was nice!
Scott, I agree with you that our failures should be on display as much as our successes. Not sure that Dolly could be described as the former – only the good die young!
Henry Gee wishes it to be known that as he doesn’t have a machine that goes ‘ping’, he doesn’t feel qualified to make any further comments on this thread. Not unless it’s in danger of achieving another century.
Bloody hell. Gee does it again.
No ball, I’m afraid. The century was scored by ‘Extras’.
Hhmm. Henry Platini Gee. Prolific striker or poacher?
The first time it was deliberate. The second was pure luck, Brian.
We don’t have the loops either. Well, one person has one, but the rest of us are expected to use PLASTIC DISPOSABLE LOOPS! Of course, I always use twice as many as i actually need, because I automatically hold them in the flame before use, but the plastic ones don’t seem to like that very much…
I’m working on a little project about lab waste (both unavoidable and unnecessary) and I just realized I forgot to photograph the stupid loops, so the camera is going back to the lab for more photography.
HAHAHA. Plastic. Instead of platinum. I’d rather use a pipette tip.
(Y’all know about using disposable glass aspirating pipets for spreading transformations, don’t you?)
The thread that would not die. Jeez, it’s like a Geoffrey Boycott innings.
Are you comparing my blog to a primitive sport?
Eva, that’s really funny. It’s all about muscle memory again – you must have learned the flaming in your formative years and it’s too late to learn a new trick!
p.s. is your project sci-art or sci-tedious-admin?
‘Primitive’?
How dare you, Doctor Rohn? Cricket is the Queen of Sports.
I must ask you to choose a champion (I would never strike a lady) and have him step outside.
Sci-art! I don’t even have time for it, but I suddenly got inspired after seeing two or three documentaries about waste and garbage. Now I have about 50 photos of lab waste, all taken on a weekend, and I’ll do something with it at some point.
Now I have about 50 photos of lab waste, all taken on a weekend, and I’ll do something with it at some point.
Reduce, reuse, recycle. Or just toss it out with the carrot peelings and dead eppendorf tubes.
Only with more happening.
The most complex piece of equipment I got to use during my days in the lab was a rag soaked in absolute alcohol.
I work in an office. I have a hole-punch. Do you think I can ask for a platinum one?
During my entire Ph.D. the total sum of my expenditure on laboratory equipemnt was 45 pence. This was for a haberdasher’s tape measure, so I could measure the basal circumference of things like this. Answers on a postcard, please.
Oh, come on Henry – that’s too easy. It’s obviously a horn core and partially crushed skull of a bison, about 70,000 years old. Maxine has already asked it for back-payments on it’s Nature subscription.
Oooh, Bob – I’ve just seen your apostrophic solecism and have taken cover under my reinforced Nature desk for fear of incoming fire from Australia. It’s no coincidence that RPG stands for ‘rocket-propelled grenade’ (note correct use of hyphen, pax pax pax pax).
Aagh! I got the first one right.
I’m not worried – we have a bomb shelter in our building.
You have to leave some time, Bob.
considers sub-orbital bombardment. Damn, I need to make friends with some physicists.
Leave the men alone in here for five minutes and it’s either cricket, sports cars, weapons of mass destruction—or extreme grammar.
Good to see you performing to specification. As you were.
(Eva: LabLit could well be interested in your ‘results’.)
Don’t blame me, Miss. I was only talking about the tools of my ‘umble trade when I was a palaeontologist. Does a tape measure count as a weapon of mass-destruction?
hic
It’s a damned fine Scotch you have here, Dr Rohn.
Damned fine.
Talking of tape measures – a friend from Sweden posed the following to me a couple of years ago:-
”Is it true that the United Kingdom is going metric – inch by inch?”
Wrong blog, Graham. For unforgivable puns, you need to wander over to Gee’s domain.
Absolutely—you think I don’t notice what you are saying about me because you think my back is turned—well it isn’t! Back-dated Nature subscriptions all round.
And I have actually seen, in person, Sir G Boycott scoring more than one century, I’ll have you know, and it is nothing like this comment thread. Sir G B’s centuries were long, slow, drawn-out and tortured (as opposed to torturous). Ian Botham, scourge of the A66, now….
I say Maxine, may I show you my bails?
Oh, he wrote bails. For one second my tired eyes read it as something else. Sorry. I’m going to bed now.
”Sir G Boycott scoring more than one century, I’ll have you know, and it”is nothing like this comment thread. Sir G B’s centuries were long, slow, drawn-out and tortured (as opposed to torturous).?
Maxine, I think I’ll take that as a compliment.
Thank you, Jennifer, it was intended as such. (More than can be said for some of this rabble, but I am sure you have them under your iron control, despite the occasional, no doubt useful, D in D facade.)
It took me a few seconds to work out that you meant “Damsel in Distress”, Maxine, not “Dragons in Dungeons”. You’ll forgive my moment of cognitive dissonance I trust. It was the juxtaposition with ‘iron’ that gave me pause.
Jennifer Rohn: The Iron Maiden of NN?
Maybe not. Mind you, I hear Jenny sings well. Perhaps Bruce Dickinson might be interested.
Maxine, no facades here. Just me being myself; how others interpret it is not my business!