Pipet Withdrawal

At last, at last! After being here for a week, I finally got to do some bench work yesterday! I pretty much have been doing bench work since being in lab during high school, so data crunching on the computer instead of doing bench work was new and foreign to me. Currently, my project is getting to a slow start, so to more properly occupy my time, I am helping out with some other lab projects.

It's fate: cloning and I are inseparable. (Transformations, digests, ligations..... !!! ) I am going to help clone a construct that might help give me insight into my own project as well. Yesterday, I helped with a transformation, it was interesting to compare lab equipment and protocols. The concept and intent behind the procedure is the same, however, there are slight differences. For example (for all you molecular biology nerds), in this lab, they put a smaller amount of DNA into the competent cells and incubate on ice for only 20 minutes instead of the 30 I'm used to. Similarly, the equipment is slightly different but I'm at least intuitive enough to figure it out. (However, I must admit, I did, in fact, pull multiple times on a push door today :/) This morning I also did a maxi prep with the invitrogen kit, and instead of the makeshift styrofoam system we used for the holding the columns in Tucson, the German lab had a rack specially designed for holding all the columns and tubes! (That was exciting, in a very nerdy way).

BRIEFLY: Last night, my friend and I went to Alexanderplatz because she wanted to go shopping (she just got her first grad student paycheck). I resisted the temptation of buying anything but I looked around and what do you know, everything that's in fashion in the States is indeed in fashion in Berlin. The exception is that it's way too cold and rainy to wear any of it right now! (Unless you just don't care or you have a layer of natural blubber, it feels like a Tucson winter right now--first time I'm wearing coats in summer?!?).

LILY