Issue Fourteen, this twenty-ninth day of June, 2003

'Five to 10 percent of any protein is dead'

When I first started these letters I wondered whether I'd have enough material to fill them. I seriously considered whether I'd need to make use of padding and hyperbole. It may be a surprise to learn that it's all true. I couldn't make this stuff up. Fact is, indeed, stranger than fiction.

I do wonder whether he knows what we know, if you see what I mean. For example, he said on Thursday "I've had so many ideas that are sure to work and they haven't". One of those ideas is wearing a lab coat and trying to do experiments.

Yes, he's still at it. Surely the thrill will fade soon? Please? He's not been able to ethanol precipitate DNA this week. I don't know what's going on there, and he wonders why no one will entrust their samples to him to run on the same gel. Whatever.

Lab seminar on Tuesday. Some guy at the European MemBers Laboratory talking about the service he runs to get proteins soluble. Bit of a Pot Noodle one that - looked interesting but ultimately unsatisfying, and with strange green things floating around. I can sum up the talk thus; 'We've got these plasmids that express chaperones and they make recombinant protein soluble, but we're not going to let anyone else have them'. Of course, this didn't stop the Lord and Master coming up with all sorts of bright ideas (see above) (and also generated a squall of mental emails); and insisting that His-tag pilot purifications were a 'quick and easy' way of seeing if our protein is soluble. Never mind that we already have a quicker and easier way of doing it that isn't contingent on some piece of possibly unfolded crap binding to something green.

Why do I try arguing?

Lab rats

Thought we'd have a quick meeting this week. Thought wrong. Both grasshopper and me said we had nothing to report, and played a straight bat to Sauron's probing. Then it all went downhill a bit. Stud Muffin - whom I'm sure shows the same gel week in, week out - got confused (again), not knowing what the gel was meant to be this week. I think it's because of his complicated love life, which by all accounts would make a mini-series in itself.

At least, it appears complicated, but maybe that's just a smoke screen. Anyway, turns out there's this bird who isn't serious, and he is, or something, and we're all saying 'run away!' to him but he's not listening and I think we shall have to stand by with with tissues and barrels of beer.

My very young apprentice spent an 'interesting week trying to get a complex'. Unfortunately I have this niggling feeling, and it involves the words 'wheel', 'the' and 'reinventing'.

He did try native gels though, and they didn't work, so smiles (almost) all round.

I am becoming quite impressed with the Honorable Companion. He's been watching me, I'm sure, and is beginning to feel (or rather, show his feelings) the same way I do: He replied to one of the Dark Master's random suggestions with 'I don't think it's a very good idea'. I'm so proud.

Mental emails

The Unhealthy and Unsafe Section has been sending emails about disposal of just about everything. I think I can sum it up using the Redheaded One's reaction to the waste disposal chart on our lab door, 'Is this a joke?' Unfortunately, it's no joke. These guys are for real.

Someone asked for a 'small aliquot of Drosophila RNA'. Sod it. They didn't respond to me, I'm going to stay schtumm.

GenomeWeb send me a daily email, with news about the Biotech sector. This week we had 'IBM and SAS Sign Co-marketing Agreement'. The moment of cognitive dissonance was not relieved by the phrase 'The collaboration involves the combination and joint marketing of SAS customer relationship management'. The SAS don't do 'customer relationships'. They're famed for it. Similarly, the brief moment of excitement I felt at seeing the subject 'Mosquito demo' was shortlived when I realized it was from the Herrenvolk and was about a nanolitre pipetting system. Bah.

We had a brilliant one from the media kitchens though; note the creative use of punctuation:
Recently,somebody has been leaving contaminated conical flasks(with bacterial or other growth) in the Media Prep Kitchen,with the instructions ,'To autoclave and dispose off in the sink".
We are not equipped for such a service and we might be spreading the contamination to all the Labs e;g Phage contamination ETC.
In future,Please,ring Safety Section EXT nnnn.they will assist you to dispose off the Hazardous Material
Thanks

Off to make a gramme, it's a no-brainer.

Richard (- folding me, folding you, a-haaa . . .)