The Lab Monkey Thread of Joy and Despair

I'm such a scientist - more excited about finally getting MestReC to produce a 3D stacked NMR spectra of a hydrolysis experiment I ran than about scoring a goal in a game of footy...

Reply 402

I was really pleased to find a triplex assay for the PCRs I want to do, but that's mainly due to my laziness - I'm far happier that someone else has developed the assay for me :p:

Reply 403

cpchem

I'm just glad that Bristol is switching over to MestReC in place of ACDLabs, which is the devil's own work.

I'm, somewhat tragically, very excited to see the results of an experiment I ran this afternoon...

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Original post by cpchem

Yes it's rather nice! Except for a few little things like automatic multiplet picking where you'd do a better job blindfolded. Also getting the licence file was such an effort it makes you feel like you're getting access to the inventory of US Army's nuclear arsenal... :smile:

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cpchem

Original post by =gabriel=

You mean that doesn't come with it...? :frown:

Reply 406

I'm doing some literature mining for qPCR primers and it's driving me mad. So many papers just reference another paper, which references another paper, so it creates this horrible paper trail trying to get back to the original primer sets, which gene they're supposed to target etc. It doesn't help that my genome of interest gets periodically re-annotated so that primers that once matched a nice unique gene now seem to map to a repeat region.

And most of the primers are quite heavily modified for TaqMan assays, so I may well beat my most-expensive-probe-so-far record (two probes at £157 each :pinch:

). Frigging Black Hole Quenchers.

But if I don't steal someone else's primers, I have to design my own, for single-cell, 10-copy sensitivity :afraid:

Reply 407

I am having such a lab fail of a week.

A QIAGEN protocol that's never gone wrong before didn't work yesterday, but I put it down to having to abandon it half way through becuase of a fire alarm and coming back to it.

Redone it today (postponing other vital work that needs finishing before I leave for Germany tomorrow) and unless I'm very much mistaken it's failed again (can't even see ethanol pellets, nevermind isopropanol ones). What the hell is going on?!?!

Reply 408

Original post by Bekaboo

Which protocol? They're normally bullet proof! If it's a DNA extraction post maxi-prep, are you sure tehre was enough DNA in the prep?

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Original post by Athena

Which protocol? They're normally bullet proof! If it's a DNA extraction post maxi-prep, are you sure tehre was enough DNA in the prep?

It's a plasmid prep. I bought it by accident (normally use MinElute) and it's a pain in the ass, but it's never failed before unless I've messed up the final step, and then I know I have. Same cells I always use, growing for 16h... there's no way there's not enough DNA in there to form a pellet!

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Original post by Bekaboo

Is it a Maxiprep? I hate Maxiprep. Especially the step with the large columns, I always end up looking for a rack for hours. It's always worked when I did it properly though...

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Original post by =gabriel=

Is it a Maxiprep? I hate Maxiprep. Especially the step with the large columns, I always end up looking for a rack for hours. It's always worked when I did it properly though...

Nah it's mini. But the bloody columns are still utterly retarded. I much prefer centrifuge protocols.

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I frigging hate that protocol. We got some cartridges to save one of the long centrifugation steps, but if you push the pellet through the cartridge too hard, you get ****loads of protein contamination :rolleyes:

I now filter through a kleenex tissue - cheaper, quicker and cleaner, oddly! The week in which I messed up two preps and had to do a giga prep was baaaaaad. And I have to do one again soon...

Reply 413

Original post by Bekaboo

Nah it's mini. But the bloody columns are still utterly retarded. I much prefer centrifuge protocols.

You know you can get Qiagen centrifuge minipreps too? I'd say the vacuum version is generally only useful on a large scale, like 96-well plates. Doing 96 centrifuge minipreps would be a pain otherwise. But if you only have a few samples, the Qiagen columns work pretty well with a normal benchtop at 13k rpm...

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I only did a vacuum prep once, because I accidentally turned the vacuum pump on in the wrong direction and it blew my prep all over the wall :o:

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Original post by =gabriel=

No no, I know you can. That's what I meant when I said I bought it by accident. In the past I've used the MinElute centrifuge preps, but I was in a rush, and it was my first week back in the lab after about 9 months back, and Qiagen recommend them for the highest quality harvest. And somehow I didn't read the protocol before I bought it :facepalm:

As soon as I've finished this kit I'll be back to the spin preps!

Reply 416

Urgh, so frustrated with Sequencher right now.

Seriously, how has nobody designed a better piece of software than this!?

On the plus side, Step 1 of Epic Project of Doom starts Sunday

Reply 417

The Fun Molecular lab have edited a similar poster to this

http://teachfirstfiles.co.uk/Documents/Science%20A5%20flyer.pdf

to say "but if you get caught working in this lab without one, you're in deep ****."

:rofl:

Reply 418