Cora vs Primers

Today I want to talk about what i do in the lab. This will probably not be as funny as some of the other posts but might interest some of my fellow nerds out there ;) (Can’t tell you details though, it’s a secret ;) ) Non-nerds: don’t read this. You will not find it interesting. (I bet you will still read it because I’ve just made you curious. Yeah,I know, great trick.)

So I start around 9 am. And end at 7pm. Sometimes also earlier, like, 18:55. I know, it’s long, but it’s great fun!!! (told you, if you’re not a nerd like me you won’t understand) So what do we do? a lot of different things! First, there’s cell culture. Our cells (=our babies. We treat them with great care) grow on plates and we give them food and we need to change that from time to time. Also, we freeze cells sometimes when we want to put them in „stand-by“. Freezing might sound cruel but trust me, we are very nice to our cells. So that’s that. Today, for example, I changed medium and froze a 24-well plate (= a plate with 24 „homes for cells“) and that took me ages but it was cool because I got to use a multi-channel and it was awesome.

Then there’s other stuff. Like PCR. My boss lets me do my own PCR without supervising me. (my boss is awesome) actually, he has now stopped completely. He just tells me what to do and I (try to) do it and if i have a question i go and ask him... like: "booohooossss... where is this ? where is that? it must be annoying... I am quite nervous about the whole thing coz I don’t want to screw it up but so far everything had been ok so that’s cool. (I’m actually running a PCR at the moment, it will be done in 10min) The other day i designed my own primers and ordered them and the next day, they were on MY desk with My name on it and I was kinda proud J (see picture) After the PCR we do Gel electrophoresis and I get to do that by myself aswell. I also handle the etBr... scary stuff. I change gloves ALL the time because i’m so scared of it...And then I also cut the bands we need (using dangerous UV... again: scary) and we extract the DNA and it’s good fun. When we have a good PCR product we ligate it into vectors and we transform bacteria with it (that’s also running at the moment, will be done in 30min) and that’s good fun aswell. Growing bacteria is cool because you can spread them on the plate using a spreading device that you make yourself by melting and bending glass tubes. I usually fail a bit. So i just call it abstract art. So, as you can see, i’m doing many cool things and if you regret having read all of this i’m sorry to have wasted your time (Actually i’m not.) By the way we also do breaks. There’s a lunch break of like 45min (around 1pm) and a coffee break (Around 16:30) of like 30min. I already told you about the amazing coffee machine we have but i just want to emphasize the amazingness again: it’s one of these italian-style machines. And it makes amazing milk froth. And i love milk froth. Aaaaaahhhh yesssssssss!!!! So yeah, life’s good at the lab!