The beginning of today made me feel just a bit nervous. First, I was running late this morning and, as I sprinted up the front steps of the pharmaceutical science building, I nearly physically ran into the man I am shadowing this week. After profuse apologies, I also learned that he lives on the western side of Cary, which was quite a surprise. Second, Dr. Rob decided to leave me to my own devices, alone, for approximately an hour, in order to perform another protein quantification assay on my own. With scant knowledge from observing Porsha yesterday, anyone could see why I was a bit anxious. I had to mix the reagent, as well as the buffer solution, from memory, which actually did turn out well.
After diluting all 18 wells in a way that I thought was correct, I left the tray in the incubator for thirty minutes, and then for the scary part- took it to be read.
The assays are read by a rather noisy, somewhat aged machine in the biotech lab next door that requires a considerable amount of data entry before actually turning the machine on. It was the moment of truth- had I done this even remotely correct? Turns out, the answer was mostly no. After the first three wells on each row, my numbers started to get a little… off. Considerably off, if I don’t want to sugar coat it. I had help getting the machine to start from Dr. Rob’s assistant researcher named PJ, who proceeded to laugh a bit and tell me that it took her a few times to get her numbers right too, which did make me feel a little more sure.
After that, Dr. Rob had me attend a quick biosafety class, where I learned about the various biohazard levels employed in biology labs, and also a few mildly frightening stories from NCCU’s safety manager. He talked about how in labs past, he would receive after-hours calls from mildly frantic firefighters attending to a researcher who had stayed a little too long and stuck himself with a needle used to administer a blood- borne pathogen, and how in order to just work in a level 2 laboratory (out of 4, with each level drastically increasing in risk), he needed to be administered reams of vaccinations. Thankfully I don’t want to work anywhere in disease research!