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Funny moments in the Lab: A Cattlelyst collection



June 22nd 2021, a lab day as any other for the Cattlelyst lab heroes. Outside it is incredibly warm: incubators at 30 degrees are not needed anymore and are replaced by lab bench incubation. That day, our team members working in the lab agreed to share their experience with you! We talked about their routine, tips and tricks for a successful lab experiment, but in this post we would like to enlighten your day with some funny moments of our lab life.


Let’s begin with a classic “spilling everything” issue. This example by our team member 1 also gives insight into an interesting lab tool: a vacuum pump. Can you imagine what happened? Read the box on the right to find out!




You must know that Team member 1 is great at telling stories. This is probably because our Captain Jenny always begins an informal conversation asking, “Tell me something fun!”.


Anyway, here’s a second experience of Team member 1. This can easily fit in the category entitled “moments of panic”, definitely rich of lab-stories.







Do you know when the feeling when you spend hours and hours designing the experiment, losing your sight to design the DNA primers and plasmids for the transformation? You cross your fingers and hope that the tiny buddies you grew with much love survived the transformation and selection protocols and will grow on the plate. Our team member 2 shared that the moment when she finds colonies on the agar plate she bursts into a little happy dance.


A second addition to the “moments of panic” category is provided by our team member 3. We can definitely learn that deep breathing, mindfulness and a no-panic attitude are crucial for winning over lab stress! Have trust in your inner pipet spirit.



To conclude, we present a solid example of a traditional method to solve issues in the lab. Team member 1 was having issues with the minus 80 degrees freezer: it could not close anymore because too much ice had accumulated. What do you think is the best way of solving the issue? Well, simple: it only takes two very athletic people hitting the ice plates really hard to break the ice! Team member 4 joined the successful freezer repairing mission. There was a tiny drawback: a pond on the lab floor.


Hope you enjoyed reading about these experiences as much as we had fun sharing them with the whole team. The lab work is going strong, and our team would like to communicate not only that wet-lab theses are fun, but also what we’ve learned through our first-person experiences. We collected some tips and tricks on lab life. If you want to know our top three best practices in the lab and which piece of advice we would have liked to get before starting a wet-lab thesis, register to our blog and socials to be notified when our next post will be published. Should you have any questions, you can always contact us at igem@wur.nl





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