In which there should be more tea

Today is a very sci-fi sort of day.

I made the bullets for the gene gun this morning, the actual practice of which is nowhere near as cool as it sounds, though it did involve giant tanks of compressed nitrogen and desiccant pellets. Then for our discussion (which was supposed to be Monday and so got moved to today, all hail the mighty power of the instructor) we went to a classroom in the pharmaceutical sciences building (PSB -- we also have a BSB and a NSB; occasionally us first years get a little confused in the conversations). It has a special projector. We got to use uber-cool 3-D glasses, of the sort that came with a tiny chip in the frame that you use to calibrate to the projected image at the beginning of class, so that the structures you see will be 3-D while everything else remained firmly 2-D without any sort of weird overlay.

There was a weird moment while the instructor was showing us the structure of a protein where it looked like we were going to get brained by an alpha helix. Slightly nervous giggling ensued. (None of us are actual structural biologists -- if we were, we would be majoring in pharmaceutical sciences and not biomedical sciences-- so death by secondary protein structure struck us as being slightly hysterical.)

(It was a G-protein coupled receptor, if you must know. 50% of the drugs on the market target some form of that, so it's not just this random unrelated thing we have to do each week.) (Though I wouldn't mind playing with those glasses even if it's unrelated.)

(Did I mention that it was awesome? Even though I despise structural biology?)

Tossing away all my cells today made me sad, but I had to do it since no one else would take care of them otherwise and then they'd die and possibly cause contamination and then the world would end. (All the cell culture people firmly believe that contamination == end of the world.) Waiting by the bus stop in the dark and the rain was very lonely, and then I ran out of the un-caffeinated lemon tea but there was chocolate, so all was well at the end.

I'm taking the opportunity, while switching labs, to have Monday off. Parents are coming over to visit this weekend to prove, as my mom put it just now, "that we still care about you."

Cheers.

[edit 21:43]
You can apparently light nail polish on fire. Have checked.

When I'm sixty four

Second presentation of the quarter tomorrow. I think I have at least three more to go, at least two of which should require powerpoint. Oddly enough, even the prospects of doing a lab presentation is no where near as intimidating as the presentation I'll be facing tomorrow. Although lab presentation is presenting my own work, the presentation tomorrow involves me facing off the instructor who was so exasperated with us on Tuesday that he did an actual face-palm and said "Aaaaugh" in the middle of the class. He also (semi) joked about how if we're the graduate students that he really has to speak to the admissions committee and how at metaphase we're the chromosome that lagged behind and caused the whole cell to be delayed through M-phase.

On one hand, this is possibly the most educational class I will be taking this school year. On the other hand, I'm not entirely sure how I feel about being insulted by the instructor. I am, however, very clear on what I feel about the instructor, which is mostly along the lines of "stop trying to fish for answers, I have no idea what you're trying to get at" and lucky for me (and unlucky for the instructor, as proven by the face-palm) I am not alone in my sentiments.

Well, we shall see what we shall see. If you guys don't hear from me in a week, assume that the instructor has bitten my head off due to my gross incompetence at presenting research articles.

...

My current PI is fascinated by the gene gun. He wants me to try to use it to blast brain slices (we're trying to transfect a construct with glowing GFP reporter into neuronal tissues). I am slightly apprehensive, since my knowledge of the gene gun is that it's to be used on plant cells, when all other transfection methods have failed because of, usually, the type of cell wall involved. I also have trouble taking the instruction manual seriously, since it uses words like trigger and bombardment and includes instructions on how to shoot animals with it (which I think is silly and a waste of material, but explaining why will take me too long). That the PI has made a pun about aiming it at thieves to give them cancer has not helped one bit.

The fact that we make our own cartridge out of a suspension of gold (I assume because it's relatively inert) and DNA gives "the gold bullet" a whole new meaning.

Though...brain slices. I can feel vegetarianism lurking in my future.