How many of you after starting a new job had to deal with small problems coming up? These problems were most of the times solved after some struggles, and only then you actually realised that the solutions were very simple... Here’s when people burst in the cliché exclamation “why didn’t anyone tell me about this before!?”. Can you relate? Our team members certainly share the feeling since they are working on the development of Cattlelyst in the lab! With this article we want to tell to other students and iGEM teams what we’ve learned through our first-person #lablife experiences. For this we interviewed 5 team members, the same ones that shared with you their moments of panic in the lab we described in the previous post.
You must know that our 5 interviewees are great fans of primer and plasmid design. These are procedures that are very common in any molecular laboratory and are fundamental for example when cloning specific genes from an organism to another. The research sub-projects of our team members are rich in cloning steps and it is a luck (or a consequence of adaptation!) that they are fond of designing them!
What kind of people are the members of Cattlelyst when working in the lab? When people think about scientists, several images can come to mind. Some might picture a person with messy hair handling glassware almost at random, while others can imagine a tidy, meticulous lab-coat-wearing person. We investigate what is the preferred research approach in our team, and clearly the second type had the majority of the votes: within Cattlelyst, careful planning and preparation of the experiments are preferred over a trial and error approach.
In our previous post we mentioned to reveal the top 3 best practices that our team suggest for a successful day of #lablife. Before moving to that topic, I’d like to draw for you a small picture of Cattlelyst crew’s #lablife. In the morning, you could picture us with the lab-coat on, PC open, lab journal ready for consultation. But what really characterises the mornings is the friendly chatting between students and supervisors, because as our beloved cows are, we’re very social beings too! Throughout the day, someone is very focused on the tasks, while someone else likes to talk and looks for more frequent interactions. Everyone has a different routine when it comes to ending the lab-day, but one thing is for sure, everybody ensures to have a cleaned work space and check off the to-do list, for a rewarding feeling of accomplishment. To go more into personal end-of-the-day routines from Cattlelyst team members, here are two examples: The one person that enjoys talking a lot, usually feels the need to apologise for that at the end of the day. Someone else does not limit to say goodbye to every person still there when living, but she is so sweet to even wave to DNA and cells she worked with!
Once you got to know a bit about lab-routines of our team, we present to you the long-awaited top 3 of tips for working in the lab:
When it comes to best practices, the 5 interviewee agreed that a key to a successful experiment is having a solid planning that can be easily visualised as a to-do list.
Next, I think we can all agree that it is important to stay positive in any daily activity. This aspect can be described in several optimal lab attitudes including not rushing things, trying to enjoy the procedures and work in a mindful way.
Last but not least, we can’t stress enough that priority has to be given to updating the lab journal every day! It is fundamental to use the journal to prepare for the experiments. It is equally indispensable to come back to it throughout the day to write down notes, results, anything really that could help you later on making sense of what you were doing.
Finally, the interview to our team ended with the following question: “what advice would you have liked before starting your lab work?”. Here you can find their very different and equally relevant answers which we hope could make the life of some of you easier!
“When you carelessly think "I can do/finish this quickly", sometimes it is better to first go for a coffee break instead, or call it a day completely”
“Just start. You will make mistakes anyway, and experience is the best teacher. Planning/designing an experiment is a good thing to do, but it is easy to get stuck in that phase which is a waste of time.”
“Stuff not studied before is prone to fail, and that is okay. Keep your head up, and use the logic you have gathered through literature to take experiments one step further.”
“It's all about statistical significance!”
“Check if your pipets are calibrated!”
We hope you enjoyed reading about our experiences in the lab. In this post we covered routines, best practices and some tips on #lablife. We encourage you to subscribe to our monthly newsletter to stay up-to-date with our progresses. The newsletter is regularly sent at the beginning of each month. Get in touch at igem@wur.nl for any question you may have!
Comments