Episode VII: The Lab

I suppose it is just about time that I post about something “important” and “career-related”, so here we go: The biggest part of a biology PhD program is research, and as of a few weeks ago, I am officially enrolled in laboratory rotations. Basically, lab rotations consist of the student working in three different labs, with a period of about two months spent in each lab. At the end of the last rotation, you decide which lab you want to continue in. For your edification, I have provided a brief description of each of the labs that I will be rotating through.

Chris Gamblin runs the lab that I am currently working in. He studies a protein called tau that is thought to be important in the development of Alzheimer’s disease. He has lots of spending money (so I hear) and employs a rather large staff, with a post-doc, two technicians, a graduate student and an undergraduate student. He also listens to completely random music in lab.

Erik Lundquist heads up the lab for my second rotation, in which he studies C. elegans, a little tiny see-through worm. The goal of the lab is to better understand neuron development.

Rebecca Hays’ lab studies flies and looks at the molecular mechanisms that induce apoptosis (“programmed cell death”). This topic relates to human diseases such as cancer and Parkinson’s disease.

In looking at the pictures of my professors, you might be led to believe that all KU biology professors are white and in their thirties to early-forties. Of course, you would be badly mistaken: there are plenty of fifty or sixty-year-old professors at KU.

I figure you might enjoy a photo from everyday life in the lab, so here is a picture from Dr. Gamblin’s lab: it consists of my E. coli bacteria growing right next to leftover Halloween candy (which is free for the taking).

And for something completely different…

There was some kind of drawing put on by the various food courts here on campus, where if you ate at every one of them in a certain amount of time, and got a stamp for each one, you would get a free drink and be entered into some kind of drawing. Needless to say, I had little difficulty eating at all the different places, and I enjoyed my free drink, and what do you know, I also managed to win…

A pink scooter!

It is battery powered, and recharges via a normal wall plug.

I have named the scooter “The Thugmobile” (for obvious reasons), and it has been quite a hit already. Just last night (Friday) Emery Wright and I took took it from one end of campus to the other, and had a total of about eight comments (mostly favorable), including two pretty young women who wanted to ride it, a guy who quoted Napoleon Dynamite (“You ever take it off any sweet jumps?”) and a police officer who thought surely we must have stolen it.