Scientific Breakthroughs of Epic Proportions
Today, I will describe two silly discoveries I have made which, if widely distributed, would effectively ruin my credibility as a research scientist even before I had a chance to build it up. Fortunately, I suspect nobody is reading this blog anymore, so I can spill it for you.
DISCOVERY #1: IF YOU GIVE SOMETHING UNPLEASANT A FUN NAME, IT AUTOMATICALLY BECOMES FUN - I have been doing a lot of biocompatibility experiments recently which essentially involve growing some cells in plastic wells, adding a material I have made, and then waiting four days and checking what percentage of the cells survived the presence of the material. It's essentially a very crude way to filter out the really tragic materials before actually injecting or implanting the material into an animal. These experiments are real ordeals - they each take several days since you have to count and plate out the cells, feed the cells (they are hungry little guys), sterilize the materials (typically 20-30 different materials per experiment), load them into syringes for injection, apply the materials (about a five hour process over which you have to remain sterile the whole time), and then assay for how happy the cells are after a pre-determined time period (a four-step, timed process which requires you to donate a full day of your life to science). So, the bottom line is that this is a tedious and very work-intensive process which is not normally something you would look forward to. In response, I decided that if I gave the experiment a fun name, I would be happier about doing it (half jokingly believing this at first). I settled on "Cellapaloozah", which not only rolls nicely off the tongue but also evokes memories of a fun party atmosphere which requires narcotics to truly enjoy. However, both myself, my undergrad slaves, and my other lab co-workers genuinely did enjoy the experiment much more by joking about it all day (somebody else's undergrad slave actually asked if she, too, could take part in Cellapaloozah seeing as how fun it was). I have since kicked the fun up another notch with the sequels (note the Roman numerals, gives the whole thing some extra gravitas I think), "Cellapaloozah II: The Return of the Fibroblast" and "Cellapaloozah III: The Bupivacaine Boogie", which premiered just this Thursday (PS 1 - early box office returns suggest that Cellapaloozah III is a hit so far; PS 2 - if you understand either of the subtitles, you are just as much of a geek as me) :) Try it, it's fun!
DISCOVERY #2: CELLS NEED SOME LOVING TOO - We were having trouble growing fibroblasts, cells found in connective tissues which are normally child's play to culture. We changed the media, cleaned the incubator, bought fresh cells... and still had no luck whatsoever. So, out of actual scientific ideas, we repeated the experiment and wrote "good luck little guys" on their growing flask. Guess what - they grew! We decided to experiment a bit by switching to happy faces instead - life was still good! Scientifically, we then shook it up and experimented whether button or point noses were better - either way, the cells were happy campers. For two weeks, any cells we cultured with a happy face on their flask grew while cells without happy faces died... it was absolutely creepy, and to this day we have never figured out what was going on. So, the bottom line: just like people, cells need a little encouragement from time to time :)
Tomorrow: "Blogging Truancy Excuse #2!"
