lab work, week one

[jinian]

I am SO. TIRED. Which is partly from having had two midterms this week, but partly also from fitting in ten hours of lab work -- which means it's fun.

Mostly I've been washing dishes. I autoclaved one load of pipette tips and assorted Pyrex, which was even more exciting after the "did it get hot enough" detector failed. (There is currently a note on the autoclave. Broke it! Yay me!) There were no dirty dishes when I left yesterday, though of course many were not yet fully sterilized, and those pesky researchers used more dishes today.

I got to sow seeds for our standard lines of Arabidopsis today! They are very small and have to be picked up by water-adhesion on the tip of the pointiest forceps. Luckily they are top-of-the-soil sorts of seeds, since burying them at a specified depth could get really tricky. Tomorrow I may get to transplant seedlings from an agar plate into pots. I think the reason some seeds are started in plates is that they're meant to be observed while they're smaller, when washing dirt off would be a hassle.

Comments

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

I have been teased for picking out the relevant details but here I go again: blah blah blah lab blah blah blah plants blah blah blah satisfaction = Happy Missy K. Yay!

:)

[cheesepuppet.livejournal.com]

Ah, I'm just so proud. You're the geekiest plant girl I know. :)

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

Have fun. When I actually grew plants (beans and sunflowers in my case, we needed large flat leaves for my experiments) I learnt the habit of referring to anyone whose seeds have just sprouted as a "new mum" or "new dad". It totally throws people who don't know the joke, particularly since I'm (human) childless.

[beaq.livejournal.com]

What is them Arabidopsis for?

[jinian.livejournal.com]

I don't know exactly the disposition of these. Generally the lab looks at organ development in Arabidopsis by comparing plants with different mutant alleles to the wild type. I would know more if I didn't have physics lecture during the weekly meeting, but unfortunately I do.