Food vs. Sleep – A BIG Decision
6:30, my alarm started deafeningly. Afraid of waking my roommate who’s allowed to sleep until 10:00, I jumped down bed to fetch my phone. After having decided to give away my breakfast opportunity, I jumped back onto my bed.
7:20, I dragged myself out of bed and floated outside to fetch my laptop. A new day in SSP begins.
Our Prokaryotic Children (‘s remains)
Working in a lab team is always fun as we shared our successes and failures. This was particularly true for yesterday during cell culture, where Cailyn, Matthew, and I got to be the last to leave lab. Today, we get to share the joy of fetching from a shaker our children – a whole 2.5L flask of E. coli.
(a picture of my dear teammate Matthew, overcome by the joy of becoming a parent of so many nice-smelling children)
We were all exhilarated by the fact that our children lived up to our expectations, reaching a wonderful optical density (OD) of 2.7. After transferring them from the shaking incubator to the 500ml bottles, we were taught how to centrifuge them in a huge rotor, as well as scrape them out of the bottles using a spatula to store at -80 degrees. This is a great first-time experience for us as parents, as well as a lesson on how to properly handle our prokaryotic children.
After lab, we headed towards the IMU for a cup of chocolate milk that our teammate, Matthew, extolled. Sadly, the coffee shop (sugar n’ spice) was closed for Saturday, so we went upstairs for Starbucks. Soon we went back for lectures and workshops, but the walk from IMU to Chemistry Hall is refreshing as it relieved us from the depression that resulted from yesterday’s experimental difficulties.
Great Pizza Place at IMU
After an approximately 2-hour lecture by Dr. Shu and Dr. H, we transitioned into lunchtime and headed back to IMU. Despite the closed coffee shop, we were able to get great delicious slices of pepperoni pizza (there were also cheese/vegan pizza) and bread sticks (with cheese) at the pizza place. The food has instilled in us more energy and love for biochemistry, and we are already prepared for any experiments, activities, and other work on the purification and analysis of our protein next week.
