Getting Out of Boston

            This week was pretty awesome. After figuring out what had been going wrong with my DNA preps, they all went pretty smoothly. Which was really nice, since I did a lot of genotyping last week. My postdoc is trying to fill some gaps in her data for the paper, and I was in charge of confirming the genotypes of the mice that were part of the experiment. As a result, the first few days of the week were almost entirely consumed by genotyping and running PCR.

            The second half of the week was relatively more exciting. On Wednesday afternoon and Thursday, I spent the day doing a Dot Blot. Dot Blots do pretty much the same thing as Western Blots, which I’ve been running up to this point. The difference lies in the fact that rather than loading the protein samples into a gel and running the gel out to see bands of protein, the dot blot protocol calls for putting a small amount of protein sample directly onto a membrane and then using antibodies to visualize your protein of interest. While this doesn’t allow for protein quantitation, it is a lot faster than the Western Blot, so it’s a good way of seeing whether or not there is any of the protein of interest in a given sample. In case you were wondering, the procedure is called a ‘Dot’ Blot because you are blotting protein onto a membrane, and if there is any of the protein of interest in the sample, it will show up as a dot.

            Because the Dot Blot is a relatively speedy protocol, I was able to finish it on Thursday, and we were able to determine which method of preparation actually yielded the most protein (indicated subjectively by which dot is the darkest on the membrane). As a result, on Friday we started from scratch with the method that the Dot Blot had shown to be most effective.

            We decided that the best method for finding protein was a whole cell extraction. There are various methods for doing this, but the one we ended up using involved playing with liquid nitrogen. Okay, not playing really. I was very responsible with it. But it was fun anyway. Liquid nitrogen is really cool stuff- literally and figuratively. It’s cold enough to burn you if handled improperly, and it freezes tissue samples, pretty much on contact.

            We were using it to freeze some tissue samples and to keep them cold while grinding them up with a mortar and pestle.  It was really interesting how pouring the liquid nitrogen on things didn’t get them wet- we were able to drop some samples in a container full of liquid nitrogen and then just pour them out into a cardboard box without the remaining nitrogen compromising the integrity of the box in the way that water would have. We also dumped some the remnants of the liquid nitrogen on the floor and watched it skitter around a bit until it evaporated. It was really pretty cool- I’d seen demonstrations of liquid nitrogen in some of my classes before, but I’d never actually gotten to use it.

            This weekend was a lot of fun as well. On Saturday, we drove down to Cape Cod and explored a little bit. We stopped by a seafood restaurant for lunch, and I had fish and chips for the first time on the East Coast. Then we headed to a glassblowing museum, which was really interesting. We learned about how glass is made and colored, and we watched a demonstration of glassblowing.

This is the 'ringer' thing they gave us at the restaurant. It's the thing that vibrates when your food is ready, and it was too cute not to take a picture of. :P

            Watching the glassblowing demonstration was very interesting. Even though every movement that the lady demonstrating made was probably very carefully calculated in order to properly form the drinking glass that she was making, she made it seem pretty effortless. She somehow managed to keep up a running commentary, explaining everything she was doing, while simultaneously handling very hot pieces of semi-molten glass. I was very impressed with her ability to handle the glass and mold it into the proper form. Glassblowing is kind of awesome- I have no idea how people manage to make ridiculously arty things, like the Chihuly sculptures or even just handblown drinking glasses. Okay... I know the theory behind it, now, but it’s still kind of hard to fathom. :P

Here are some examples of the lovely glassware that we saw at the museum:

            We also learned really fascinating things about how glass is colored. The museum had glasswork from the 1870’s and onward, and showed different examples of how each piece had been colored by the addition of a heavy metal. For instance, adding gold made red glass, adding copper or cobalt oxide made blue glass, and adding uranium made canary yellow glass. The cool thing about the canary yellow glass is that the addition of uranium gave it low levels of radioactivity. There were two exhibits in the museum that showed this- the first had canary glass set up under a black light, where it glowed in the dark because of the presence of uranium. The second had canary glass set up behind a rotating lead shield. There was a Geiger counter sitting in the exhibit, and as the glass passed it, it clicked vehemently. Since uranium has a half-life of somewhere between 704 million and 4.47 billion years, it’s not altogether surprising that there should still be radioactivity present after a mere 130-odd years.

            After visiting the glass museum, we drove a little bit farther to a small town on the Cape. I say small because I’m pretty sure that the only business besides various tourist shops and restaurants was the marine biology lab that seemed to dominate the entire town. It was really pretty though, and very quintessentially small-town on the East Coast. We ended up having a delicious ice cream cone (I’d say it probably rivals Husky Deli, which is saying something). We sat on the beach for a little bit before driving back to Boston. On the return trip, my roommate’s friend, who was driving us, dropped us in Braintree so that he could avoid paying the tolls associated with entering Boston from the freeway. We took the T back into Boston and ate some yummy Thai food at a random restaurant that we picked while we were walking back.

Here's some of the views from the town we stopped in:

            Sunday was a lazy day- pretty much the only productive thing I did was calling my parents for their anniversary (happy belated anniversary, parents!! :D )

In addition to our phone call, I took a two hour long nap and enjoyed some lovely food, cooked by my roommate. I’ll be cooking next Sunday, so look forward to hearing how that goes!

I hope that everyone has a wonderful week!