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Jul. 6th, 2005 08:44 pmSlowly, slowly, slowly my mind is returning to normal. Today I was almost witty again. Today I almost enjoyed science again. Today I almost wasn't tired. Almost, almost, almost. It was a good day. But I still need a vacation.
It was a very productive day. I was in the lab from 9 to 5 and spent most of that working diligently. I got two different things done for my thesis and one big thing done for COSMOS... Kate and I enjoyed doing the COSMOS stuff today. It turns out we both have the same quirky sense of humor when it comes to working with cells, which led to Cell Aerobics, among other things. Heaven help the students.
The last hour I was working the cell culture room was actually pretty hilarious. I was splitting one flask of cells into 3 96-well plates and another flask, and this was for the Phen Green assay (very important), so I had everything written out ahead of time, I had a flowchart made, and I spent a good half hour getting equipment together. And this is just to split cells. But 96-well plates are a pain to work with and even more of a pain to seed (put cells in) in the first place, so splitting this flask into these plates was going to take me a while.
Don (my advisor) suggested that I make three 96-well plates, even though I only need two. It's a pain in the ass to make one, but it's just as easy to make 3 as it is to make 2, and definitely saves time if I drop one a week into the experiment. I won't have to go back and start another plate. So I made three. Everything went quite smoothly. I put the three plates and the new flask into the incubator, cleaned up the hood, and got some things ready for the COSMOS thing I was going to do next.
Then I pulled the 3 96-well plates out of the incubator so I could label them.
And I dropped one. It landed upside down on the floor, and cells and media went all over the incubator.
I wanted to cry. Instead, I labeled the two plates I was holding, cleaned up the third, whipped out a magically placed fourth sterile plate, and used the leftover cells (that I luckily hadn't thrown out yet) to seed a fourth plate. I labeled it and set it ever so gently into the incubator. And then I realized that I'd used 3 mls of cells instead of 2 mls, and I'd used half a 50 ml pipette instead of half a 25 ml pipette of media. So I have NO CLUE what the concentration of cells in the fourth plate is. *slaps self in forehead*
So... I pulled out the cells for COSMOS and was going to split THEM into new flasks. Now, splitting into flasks is NOT an intensive task. All I really had to do was suck of the old media, throw on some trypsin, let the cells sit a minute, then throw them into some new media in their new flasks. This is extremely trivial and normally takes about five minutes.
I sucked off the old media using a pipette and put it into a conical vial instead of using the vaccuum to suck it off (it seemed wasteful to turn on the vaccuum for 20 mls of media). I picked up the conical vial, drew it out of the hood, and tried to screw on the lid while I was reaching to throw it away.
And I dropped it in my lap.
Why I dropped so many things today, I don't know. But there are now AF5 cells living on the floor of the TC room (I'm sure my efforts to ethanol the area weren't 100% effective) and M213-20 cells living on my pants.
Good grief.
It was a very productive day. I was in the lab from 9 to 5 and spent most of that working diligently. I got two different things done for my thesis and one big thing done for COSMOS... Kate and I enjoyed doing the COSMOS stuff today. It turns out we both have the same quirky sense of humor when it comes to working with cells, which led to Cell Aerobics, among other things. Heaven help the students.
The last hour I was working the cell culture room was actually pretty hilarious. I was splitting one flask of cells into 3 96-well plates and another flask, and this was for the Phen Green assay (very important), so I had everything written out ahead of time, I had a flowchart made, and I spent a good half hour getting equipment together. And this is just to split cells. But 96-well plates are a pain to work with and even more of a pain to seed (put cells in) in the first place, so splitting this flask into these plates was going to take me a while.
Don (my advisor) suggested that I make three 96-well plates, even though I only need two. It's a pain in the ass to make one, but it's just as easy to make 3 as it is to make 2, and definitely saves time if I drop one a week into the experiment. I won't have to go back and start another plate. So I made three. Everything went quite smoothly. I put the three plates and the new flask into the incubator, cleaned up the hood, and got some things ready for the COSMOS thing I was going to do next.
Then I pulled the 3 96-well plates out of the incubator so I could label them.
And I dropped one. It landed upside down on the floor, and cells and media went all over the incubator.
I wanted to cry. Instead, I labeled the two plates I was holding, cleaned up the third, whipped out a magically placed fourth sterile plate, and used the leftover cells (that I luckily hadn't thrown out yet) to seed a fourth plate. I labeled it and set it ever so gently into the incubator. And then I realized that I'd used 3 mls of cells instead of 2 mls, and I'd used half a 50 ml pipette instead of half a 25 ml pipette of media. So I have NO CLUE what the concentration of cells in the fourth plate is. *slaps self in forehead*
So... I pulled out the cells for COSMOS and was going to split THEM into new flasks. Now, splitting into flasks is NOT an intensive task. All I really had to do was suck of the old media, throw on some trypsin, let the cells sit a minute, then throw them into some new media in their new flasks. This is extremely trivial and normally takes about five minutes.
I sucked off the old media using a pipette and put it into a conical vial instead of using the vaccuum to suck it off (it seemed wasteful to turn on the vaccuum for 20 mls of media). I picked up the conical vial, drew it out of the hood, and tried to screw on the lid while I was reaching to throw it away.
And I dropped it in my lap.
Why I dropped so many things today, I don't know. But there are now AF5 cells living on the floor of the TC room (I'm sure my efforts to ethanol the area weren't 100% effective) and M213-20 cells living on my pants.
Good grief.
