We’ve leapt out of the chemostat and into equally tough stuff

Hello everyone, my name is Tyler and I’m from San Diego, CA.

Today is a very special day because it’s the first time we haven’t dealt with chemostats. In case
you haven’t inferred from previous blogs, those things are incarnations of pure evil devices that
strongly stimulate our critical thinking. Indeed, in my self-reflection at the end of the second
week, I wrote that chemostats require “an amount of attention comparable to toddlers in the
middle of the night.”

*Jonathan, Nicole, Anthony and Aibike are happy not to be dealing with chemostats anymore.


In place of chemostats, we spent the day extracting DNA for sequencing. In a sense, our
experiments hinge on this step; without high quality DNA, we cannot obtain reads, and without
reads, we have nothing to analyze in the coming weeks. As such, everyone put off napping
during lab for another day (we actually don’t do this… usually), instead concentrating on the
task at hand.

*Sindia and I are locked in on our experiment.


At the end of the day, every group succeeded in extracting high-quality DNA. We could finally
sleep with no worries…
Except, of course, SSP would never allow us to rest easy without ruminating on some new
topic. Today, we were introduced to the challenging bioinformatic concept of read mapping.

*Dr. Mano explains how seeds, clusters, and gaps work for the 12th time.

At the moment of writing, it is 10:08pm and we are still in the lab. After what has been a grueling
day, I’m looking forward to ruminating more about bioinformatics in bed. Truthfully, SSP
intentionally throws a lot at us, but such a challenge brings to light a level of resilience we
scientists are not normally associated with. Dealing with chemostats, toilsome labs, and difficult
concepts is simply a part of what SSP deems “doing real science.” And doing science is what
we’re here for.