Mad rush

The last three days had been, like, experiment-mad-rush for me. I've been clocking in very early and staying in the lab till very late designing and executing experiments to troubleshoot my thus far negative results.

On Thursday, I stayed late to extract the bloody genomic DNA which turned up with terribly poor yield. The entire day of lysis - centrifuge - lysis - centrifuge - wash - centrifuge - wash - centrifuge - elute - centrifuge - elute AGAIN had gone to waste as proven by the blank gel photo. I darn hate it when I get blank gel photos. It didn't help that my gel broke into half and I wasted the time to piece it together, when all I actually had was no DNA.

Yesterday, I left the lab only when midnight struck. Seriously, I might consider sleeping in the lab soon. The whole day and night was devoted to making.... you've guessed it, competent cells. Chemically competent E.coli in the day, electro-competent E.coli in the night. By nine, most of my colleagues and FYP-mates had left the lab, and then I realized I was the only living being (apart from all the bacteria in the freezer) in the entire level. Heck, it was possible I was the only being left in the building. The thought creeped me out, especially when I had to work at the biosafety cabinet (BSC). While aliquoting the stupid (hopefully) competent cells into small vials in the BSC, my back was facing the lab entrance, and not being able to see anyone who might come thru the lab entrance made me very nervous. All the while aliquoting, I thought I heard the hinge of the lab door creak. Obviously there was no one around, but I kept turning around in paranoia and the pipette in my hand started to tremble so much I couldn't aliquot properly. After several minutes, I was no longer creep out but very annoyed because the volume of cells made didn't seem to reduce no matter how much I transfer into the smaller vials!!!! I was already very very tired and wanted to go back to my bed, but the bottle of cells remained still as much!! When I finally did finish with the cells and cleaning up, it was already close to 11pm. But then, I did something very stupid.

After I left the school building, I realized I forgot to transfer the expensive rotor back into my lab from the common room. My lethargy was getting into my head, and I thought, "I'm too tired to walk back to lab. I'll come back earlier tomorrow to keep it." However, after walking some 800m away later, a wave of worry washed over me as I begun to imagine unauthorized users spoiling/stealing the rotor. There is absolutely no way I could pay for that bloody expensive rotor. Besides, if the rotor is spoilt, I can kiss my FYP goodbye. It was a storm in my head as the Angel and Devil debated whether I should continue walking back to my room or to return to the lab. Finally, Angel won and I trudged back to lab. Stupid rotor! By the time I really did reached my room, it was already 12midnight! If I had turned back the first time, I needn't wasted my already-draining energy and precious time!

I thought I could then just sleep after such a long and tiring day. But no no. I had another experiment to design for the next day and had much thinking to do. I didn't really have the mental energy to think, but I kept tossing and turning in bed, until I gave up sleeping and got up to design the experiment at 3am.

I didn't had it easy today either. Had to wake up early to go to lab again to troubleshoot the genomic DNA extraction and transform the (hopefully) competent E.coli cells. I had thought I could finish before dinner time, but like always, E.coli dictates my schedule, not vice versa. In the end, I get to leave the lab only at 9pm... and I didn't even get to run gel to check the gDNA!!

Tomorrow's another half day (I hope) in lab again... and this time, I'm praying all my results are positive. If they aren't, I declare war against E.coli.

～みはる～