Today I finally begin doing DNA labwork for the first time since I finished my dissertation labwork about a year and a half ago. Hormone assays are fun and all, but I was pretty excited to be back in a DNA lab. Today I was extracting DNA from avian blood using the phenol-chloroform method, which I hate, but it's what my boss wants so whatever. And since it's been awhile, I of course screwed things up. I present to you today's list of reasons why I am too stupid to be a scientist:
- I dropped a pipet tip into the bottle of (toxic, corrosive) phenol-chloroform. I had to fish it out with a pair of scissors.
- I pipetted sample 6 into sample 5.
- I knocked over a half-full box of sterile pipet tips, rendering them unsterile and therefore useless for DNA work.
- I turned on the water faucet and it sprayed all over me.
Ok. Your turn. Cheer me up.
19 comments:
I tried to book a bed and breakfast for an upcoming trip that turned out to be a recovery home for people who had just had plastic surgery. And they were closing soon (gone out of business). Visions of people with full face masks and drips at breakfast...urgh!
You pipetted sample 6 into sample 5? Stupid cow....
Well, today I got into work and on to the floor already to start at 10am. Wasn't supposed to start til 12pm. Pretty stupid. Am NOT blogging about it.
Ummmm . . . I admire you for doing all this dangerous scientific work for those of us who refused to take even grade 10 biology - formaldehyde and dissecting frogs? No thanks!
I'm too stupid to be a scientist because everything I know about DNA has come from CSI, and you know how accurate that must be!!
Dangerous Chemicals + Sleep Deprivation = Science!.
Gosh, gee. I have nothing that compares! Well, unless you include this:
Dog 1 threw up outside on deck.
Dog 2 tried to eat it.
Me (dog 3?) in order to stop Dog 2 got hose to spray said up throw off deck.
Dog 3 pressed the release-valve-doohickey and no water. Shook said RVD, tried again, nothing. Saw kink in hose. With RVD depressed (or oppressed for Publius) unkinked hose and sprayed self, Dog 2 and Dog 1. Hurried, shut off hose. Brought in Dogs, changed clothes and remembered to go back out and get rid of it some 5 hours later after flies and nested and it turned to a harden mass.
Feel better, Pipett?
When I first started working in lab, I got microliters and mililiters confused. The person who was traning me told me to put 100 microliters of the ethidium bromide solution into the gel solution. So, I grabbed a 100 mL graduated cylinder and started measuring. You can imagine his surprise when I told him there was only 80. "only 80 microliters? we just got a new bottle of that stuff a month ago!". So I sloshed the cylinder full of mutagenic Ethidium towards him and said "well see? it doesn't go all the way to the 100". The look of terror on his face is something I'll never forget. I dont' think he or anyone else in the lab had ever seen that much Ethidium at once.
The next day when my boss told me to transfer the 8 different fly stocks I was going to be using into new bottles, I did so quite happily. Then....I looked down at the bottles - and realized I never labelled any of the new ones and had no idea which bottle was which. Nice!
I have run my DNA gel backwards over 20 times - that's just plain sad.
And, let's see - my friend used Manganese chloride instead of Magnesium chloride for his PCRs for over a year before he figured out that's why they wouldn't work.
We all have shitty days in lab, I guess. They sure do suck. Sorry you had one today. And why do the bosses ALWAYS love the phenol-cholroform method? Qiagen kits are perfectly fine if you ask me (...not that you did)
I don't have any stupid lab mistakes but my new job involves field work. There are some really stupid mistakes you can doing field work. For example, driving 45 minutes to the field site only to find that you have forgotten an important piece of the GPS unit. Or, being a botanist, accidentally sitting down for a rest on some stinging nettles. Good times!
Since I am way too clumsey to be a scientist (hand-eye coordination isn't one of my few talents)...
I've left on many a debate trip without the directions or registration location. Once the total directions I had were, "Go to Colorado Springs, find the hotel".
I managed to lock the keys in the debate van, while it was running. Cletus from Lincoln, NE Texaco had to come out in his snowpants and t-shirt to help me out.
I was on vacation once, got kind of tipsy on the way back from the beach and puked in my purse.
I've put the tip of a knife into the palm of my hand, twice -- once on a bagel and once an avacado. Both could have been cut with a butter knife.
I love you guys.
when i was in college i had to take pictures of bones and as i was setting a mandible in clay i broke it in half. YAY!
I once referred to the proliferation of blood vessels in response to blockage of the main vessel as "anastomosis". Right in front of my instructor.
While looking for the canopy walk at a tropical field station, I followed what I thought was a marked trail. After 20 minutes I realized that all of the "trail markings" were on the same type of tree. There was no trail - there was a plant census going on, and I'd randomly followed a bunch of marked palm trees.
Luckily I stumbled upon the canopy walk and managed to orient myself with the crappy map I had, but being lost in a rain forest is not a good feeling.
goodness sake. if you're going to be fussy about knocking your tips over.. you may as well give up now. Many a good experiment performed with dirty tips rescued off the floor. I should know
In the electronic circuits lab I took in college, I managed to set my circuit board on fire. Every single week. Apparently you have to be careful with the voltage levels...who knew? Ah, nothing like the smell of smoking capacitors to bring back fond college memories....
Thankfully, my memory is too poor to remember my stupid mistakes for long. I've certainly made my share, but I can't remember any amusing ones right now. Instead, I thought I'd offer some hope for all of us.
Tanaka got a Nobel Prize in 2002 for adding the wrong reagant. Manganese instead of magnesium? That ain't nothing. Tanaka used glycerol instead of acetone (how the heck do you confuse those two?). There's hope for us all.
Many a good experiment performed with dirty tips rescued off the floor. I should know
Me too. Seriously, pick 'em up and pretend nothing happened. Molecular biology is mostly bucket chemistry in very small buckets.
The standard laser jock joke is that there are any number of colors you can only see once in each eye.
I dropped my CAT assay chromatography plates completely into the solvent once (day after St Patrick's). I ran it anyway; the exposed film looked like a frog instead of a neat row of dots. I showed it to my boss when he asked how the experiment had gone, and his only comment was "well, that's no good to me, but maybe you can submit it to the Tate Modern".
Luckily I worked with a fellow grad student who a) made agar plates without the agar in them and wondered why they hadn't set by the next morning, b) looked directly into the UV light on the gel box and was blind for 24 hours, c) spilled liquid radioactive waste on the floor, stood in it, and was tracked to his bench by the safety officer following his footprints with a Geiger counter.
So nothing I did ever looked that bad.
I reached over an open flame to grab a pair of tweezers and set my arm hair on fire.
Good thing I wasn't wearing a long-sleeve shirt.
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