Life in the Lab. (what a cliche).
So, I sort of have a track record of long blog posts. Sorry *grin* This one will also fall in line, just because, depending on what I'm doing, there are two 'typical' days in my lab.
1) A Timecourse Day
7:30 - come into the lab early to count and dilute my cells that I grew up the previous day.
10ish - get back to the lab - boy do I want to get back to the lab! recount cells, and, as soon as they get to the right density, add the mating pheromone alpha factor to them to make them "arrest" (stop in the same phase of the cell cycle).
12ish - check the cells to make sure that they have all arrested. If they have, put them into new media, and start my timecourse.
.... 4.5 hours of reading papers, looking at college websites, working on poster stuff, and facebooking, all while running out every 15 minutes to take a sample, later...
4:30ish - clean up everything and sonicate the cells so that any clumps break apart, making for easier counting.
5:00ish - talk to Sara about what's going to happen tomorrow. grow/streak any necessary cells/make notes/organize lab notebook.
5:30ish - go home.
Exciting, yes? Here's the alternative:
2) Counting Day
10ish - count cells. find a sample of about 200 cells for each timepoint and count how many have buds and how many do not.
3ish - create budding curves in excel by plotting percent cells budded against time. enter data into CLOCCS program to get another fit. email results to Sara to add to the lab database.
4ish - talk about what's going to happen tomorrow. set up/grow any cultures.
5:30ish - go home.
Notice all the 'ish' endings... lots of different things happen during the day, changing these times around. The biggest is meetings - we have at least two lab meetings a week, and at other times there will be impromptu discussion sessions. Sometimes Sara and I will meet to go over a concept or idea, or I'll be running a PCR, mutation check timecourse, or other procedure.
The days are just flying by... but I'm learning a lot. I can't wait until all of my data comes together :)
