In the lab

Monday March 23, 2015

After having spent the weekend in Jacó thinking about nothing but perfect waves, I arrived to the lab with a brain slightly turned off. And it was about to be engaged fully. Last time I conducted an analysis like the one I was about to do was over a year ago, and not being clumsy moving around in the lab took some serious effort. The thing about doing actual science, the one that might mean something to the world, and not doing a simple elaboration for the sake of practice, is that one can’t fuck up. It’s just not an option. I feel comfortable in the lab environment, but I did feel some pressure. No one wants to be that awkward student who is in the way of everyone. But that is what is so brilliant about pushing ones comfort levels; one realizes that things just never really are that hard or complicated. Not even in the research world. I felt very excited to do something that is actual research for once. Finally, after five years of studies, I have reached that milestone that one dreams about when first enrolling their first science class at the university. After 5 hours of concentration my mind feels like it’s about to blow up, but in a content way I suppose. For those of you that are interested in the geeky sciency facts, what I was doing today was the first day of an ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) analysis. Some of the crocodile blood that we collected a while back, individuals numbers 76, 102, 105 and 106, showed that the might have had higher concentrations of vitellogenin, VTG, a precursor protein to egg yolk. What we are trying to do is figure out the concentration of this protein in the blood of the crocodiles, by using antibodies for the VTG. This might sound very high tech, but it’s just mixing and matching the right chemicals and waiting for the result. But what made my mind produce smoke was designing the concentration dilution series to match our expected results. I really need to learn how to do that faster… Until tomorrow!