Neurony goodness

Neurony goodness This week has been mostly dedicated to lab and cooking, since thats mostly what I do in the summer. Oh, and Adam and I went to Friendlys with Mark 07 last night for some awesome sundaes. It was fun and delicious. On the lab front, this week I started writing a paper about the project Ive been doing for the past year and a half. I started with the materials and methods section explaining all the experiments Ive done and the specific ways that I did them. Its the easiest section to write, because I dont actually have to think about the implications of anything I discovered, I just have to cite old papers done by other members of my lab and note the differences between our protocols. Ill be the first author on this paper, since Ive done basically all of the work on it; my postdoc Albert, who has helped me through all the (many) glitches, will be second author. Morgan, the professor in charge of the lab, gets to be last author, because hes the boss. And he pays my salary. Im going to finish up a few more experiments by the end of July, and hopefully Ill have the bulk of the paper written by then, too. After I finish the paper, well send it to a journal (Morgan hasnt decided which one yet); the journals reviewers will look at the paper and decide if it has merit. Its possible that the reviewers will send the paper back and ask us to do another experiment or two. If that happens, Albert will do the experiments and write the revision, because by then Ill probably be well into my first lab rotation for grad school! Ive been doing a few experiments at the bench this week in addition to writing the paper and making figures; mostly Ive been doing stuff with mammalian cells cultured in dishes in the incubator. I transfect the cells, which means that I get them to take up a plasmid DNA and make copies of my protein. Following the transfection, I harvest the cells for a Western blot or stain them with fluorescently-labeled antibodies. I get to go into lab tomorrow (SATURDAY) and transfect some COS7 cells, which are cells derived from a monkeys kidney. At least theres a long (5 hr) incubation, so I can mix the DNA in with the cells, then go to Fire and Ice with Adam, Mark 07, Dave 07, Steph (Daves girlfriend, Northeastern 08), Kate 07, Stephanie 08, Jomar 07, Jay 08, Kjell 09, and Tal 09. Its all-you-can-eat for $10 on Saturday afternoons! I thought Id leave you with some sweet pictures that I took on the microscope. Theyre neurons that I stained with antibodies, then came in at 8 AM to image on the scope. Arent they hot? Those are some damn good-looking neurons.