Kimwipes are Great

For those of you that don't know, Kimwipes are "delicate task wipers" designed for lab use. Sure you can use them to clean your glasses, do too-lazy-to-take-out-paper math, or wipe away tears, but they're made for science. Cleaning up media messes and wiping off cell scrapers and wiping the lens of something that you probably don't want to scratch.

Today was the last day of one of my labbies. I've only been in the lab for a year, so it hasn't been as hard for me as it has been for the others, but I'm definitely going to miss him. Yeah he's going on to bigger and better things, but it really doesn't make it any easier to not see someone that you've seen almost every day for the past 345 days. My grad student has always told me that one of the greatest things about science is the fact that we get to meet all of these smart, charming, and amazingly unique people, and from what I've seen in my short career, that is ABSOLUTELY true. Over the past year, my labmates have served as examples of how I want to live my life; they've become a second family to me. They've been the friends I wish I could be, the parents I one day want to be, and they have the kind of deep and meaningful relationships with those around them that I can only hope for when I'm older. They're kind and smart and cool and funny and I honestly don't think I could have stumbled into a more amazing group of misfits.

Today my grad student told me that one of the worst parts of science is getting to spend time with and bond with all of these smart, charming, and amazingly unique people only to have them leave. We understand that every experience is just a stage in our careers and in our lives, but wow, it's sad. Since this is just a part of science, does that make it okay to use Kimwipes to wipe away the tears? Who cares? We'll do it anyways.

If you have 'Myco', 'Myces', or 'Mycena' in your scientific name, I HATE you.

We have recently ended the war on gels. We've undoubtedly won. I made 6 Western-gels the other day and not a single one leaked. Mission Accomplished (hopefully I won't regret saying this).

With the end of the war on gels, a new enemy has, again, reared its ugly mycelium. Of course, like any scientist that works with tissue culture, I hate having my cultures contaminated, but it stings slightly more when it's fungal for me just because we have history. My first experience with fungal contamination was a few years ago while culturing C. elegans. I'm not going to get into GREAT detail, but this fungus was a...um... jerk. Long story short it entered the nematodes through any available orifice and ate them from the inside out. It also messed up their eggs and prevented them from hatching. Needless to say, any experiments I had going on were no longer going on.

Experience number 2 was in my first real lab work as an intern. We did tumor and stem cell work and it was fun and used actual sterile technique. Did that help? It definitely helped select for a fungus that was an absolute nightmare. You could go through the lab with a black light at one point and you could see it growing on things. By the end of it everything had been autoclaved, the hallways leading to our labs smelled like hospital, and all experiments were forced to cease because of the wide spread contamination. It took a month to deal with it, but it was dealt with.

 < Not mine

Experience number 3 and the last experience was very very recent. Right after the lab outing, actually. I came back and 1 of my cultures was definitely filled with fungus and the others were sketchy. What did I do? I bleached the bitches and ethanoled the incubator. Problem solved.

And yes, I know you're not a fungus Mycobacterium, but come on, one of your species cause TB. And yes, I also plan to post about the lab outing soon... a little at a time.