IT WORKED!

-ahem- IT WORKED!

What is this "it," you ask. It is the gel that I've been running for the last two weeks in my lab. I finally got that sucker right. The first time I ran it, I had the voltage too high and left it running for too long, so all of my sample just ran right through and I got absolutely nothing. Now thats depressing. The second time I ran it, I mostly fixed the sample-losing issues but one of the lanes didn't even run. I just had a big ol' blob of protein stuck in my well. And, rawr, that was the IMPORTANT PART OF THE EXPERIMENT!!! So I was all set to go for round #3 on Tuesday and seconds away from the point of no return when Lakshmi informed us to freeze, put our stuff away and go home, SNOWDAY! Thank goodness she walked in when she did, I was about 2 minutes from the point of no return. Had I added that peskily clumping protein, I would have either had to stay all day by myself, which probably wouldn't have been an option, to finish or had to just scrap the whole thing and start over. Its not cool to go wasting my RNA like that. -whew- So I was quite nervous this morning as I finished loading the gel that it wasn't going to work at all. I had no idea what stashing it in the fridge for two days would do to my STD genes.

I stayed in the lab for most of the afternoon, checking it every 5 minutes or so, which was just a touch paranoid. So I figured around 2:15, I would take it off and oh boy, I was nervous and going to be very sad if it did not work AGAIN, especially since it absolutely has to work before the ACS presentation in March. Anyways, I took it down and put it in the pretty picture taking machine, clicked the buttons and waited--with my fingers crossed, of course--for the image to appear. -heavens part, angels sing, God smiles upon us all- THE BANDS ARE THERE! Not only are the bands there, but they are there in a pretty, asthetically pleasing, poster presentation-quality fashion. I then printed out my beautiful little picture and skipped down to Dr. Rita's office. She was quite happy and came back to the lab to look at it some more. We were so excited, I thought the protein was all clumpy again, but it wasn't! We did a little happy dance. Yeah... So maybe you had to be there... and be a science nerd...

And now it is almost time for my Ochem exam. Here's hoping that science nerb euphoria holds over...