The Scientist

It's my first week back in the lab since before finals, and it didn't take long for things to get, well, interesting.

First, there were the cultures. Cultures are pretty simple - you put bacteria in a tube full of liquid bacteria food, and they are fruitful and multiply until the tube is all beige (because bacteria generally are beige). Some of my tubes, though, were green. This meant that something else was growing in there without my consent. My anger was kindled, but I had the last laugh as I hurled the irksome prokaryotes into a tub of bleach, where they met their doom.

See, bleach is wonderful because it kills everything. When I'm working with bacteria I like to keep a little bucket of it on my bench - you know, so I can indiscriminately throw all my waste into it, and not have to worry about my waste crawling back out and eating me.

So I'm sitting there this afternoon with my bucket of bleach, and I toss in a few waste chemicals from a procedure I'm following. Apparently, in addition to killing stuff, bleach is also reactive. No, there was no explosion. It didn't burn a hole through the floor or release toxic fumes, either (I think). Instead, the liquid quickly adopted the exact color and bubbliness... of Mountain Dew. This made me very excited, since I love Mountain Dew, but also very nervous, because Lord only knew what was in those bubbles.

I rushed over to my boss to see what he thought should be done with this mysterious mixture. He told me not to worry about it, and jokingly quoted another lab member's approach: "the solution to pollution is dilution". Interestingly enough, I had just heard that quote in my environmental studies class, but in a much more vicious context.

By the way, if any of you would like to solve the mystery of What Was In My Bucket, the following chemicals were mixed:
1. Cell suspension buffer (probably a Tris buffer around pH 8 and possibly EDTA)
2. Lysis buffer (NaOH)
3. Neutralization buffer (K acetate, guanidinium hydrochloride)
4. bleach (NaOCl)

The winner for sure gets a prize.

What really sealed the deal, though, was at the end of the afternoon. I set up four big flasks of bacteria food, ready to grow up a bunch of new bacteria for tomorrow. I pulled out my petri dish and tried to scoop up the bacteria growing on it... until I realized that what I thought were colonies were, in fact, dust on the bottom of the dish. I had no colonies.

Another interesting development: my grad-student superior (John), who works in the lab upstairs, has begun bringing his giant brown dog (Montana) to work with him. Apparently, this decision has met the approval of all the members of the lab upstairs, who take turns keeping an eye on the dog when John isn't around. I'm serious.

Don't get me wrong - I love dogs, and Montana is no exception. I simply question the wisdom of bringing one into a room with lots of expensive, delicate equipment and dangerous chemicals that look and smell like water. Also, whenever I have to go ask John a question it gets awkward because Montana is jumping all over me and sniffing my personal regions, not to mention licking my lab gloves ferociously, which can't be good for him...

Just another day at the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics.