I can haz motiwayshun plz?

Being a second year grad student brings in some joys and some sorrows. The main joy being, you know for sure this time that once you are done with the course work, it truly is the last exam you've ever had to write. But that joy seems negligible compared to the sorrow. Oh, I am sorry, its not really sorrow, I think the word I am looking for is STRESS...... S.T.R.E.S.S......... S.T.R.E.S.S


That's because second year in grad school ushers in the qualifying exam, fondly called "quals". And in my university, quals has to be on a topic that is not related to your thesis project. And it has to be a novel research idea. Meaning, nobody else should have worked on this stuff before :-/ Its hard to motivate yourself to think outside of your thesis project.... why is that you ask? Well, let's see, you went through the trouble of going through several lab rotations, most of your rotations revolved around this same topic in science, and you finally picked this lab, not just because the prof and the people are really nice, but also because you are absolutely in love with the science they do. So you are pretty much married to your thesis project... it's like a long term commitment to science in that field.

So now I guess you can understand why I was not happy to have to explore outside to find a topic for quals.

Luckily for me, I am doing a course this semester that requires me to write a term paper on an original research idea, separate from my thesis work. Best part, I can use it as my quals topic if it works out well!!! :D Yay! \o/

Anyways, an unwilling MG sat down to pick out a topic. I figured, "Hey, the whole world is worried about obesity, why not think of anorexia!", and lo behold, I found a nice research topic.

So I collect all the research papers, go through them, file them neatly and get organized, open a blank word document and type in the word "Introduction". At this point, I realize I would like some music in the office. So I turn to Pandora to supply me with some good tunes.

The first song to play as I type in the initial words of my term paper....

APOCALYPSE PLEASE.... by Muse....

:-/

Is somebody trying to hint something at me???? X-(

I can haz some positive motiwayshun naow plz?

kthxbye!

:P

The "warm" feeling

A typical day at work....

Me: Ah.... its a beautiful day today!

Fellow grad student (Dawn): What's special today?

Me: Nothing much.... Just love the work I do here!

Dawn: :)

Me: In fact, I feel so good, I have this warm feeling as I speak

Dawn: Uh... erm... MG?

Me: Yeah?

Dawn: That's because your rat just peed on you *bursts out laughing*

Me: :-/

Yay Ph.D!!!! :D

It was totally worth the struggle.

MG has crossed a new milestone in her career and finally joined a lab for Ph.D!!!!

I had to fight for this spot, it was not easy.... I was shifting from biochemistry and going completely over to the super awesome field of neuroscience. And my second rotation was my intro into the field. Its also the best lab ever!!!

Unfortunately after second rotation, I got to hear that she might not have enough funding to take me on. She recommended that I look for another lab for rotation that could potentially be a new home for my grad school while she sorted out her finances. If she could fund me then great, if not, I'd still have my third rotation lab in the same department to go on with.

There is no other lab in this world that I have wanted to join so badly. No other field of research that I was so keen on. And till just a few hours ago, I thought it was out of my reach.

After a long and tiring battle, I am proud to announce that I emerged successful!

I now have an offer from the lab of my preference!!!! :D :D :D The ball is in my court, finally!

If I had just joined a lab without this struggle, I doubt the victory would not have been as sweet as this. So even though I grumbled, I can say now that I am grateful I had tough competition for the vacancy. I've never been so satisfied before.

YAAAAAAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D :D :D :D :D

Here's to a career in answering all of the difficult questions that our very own brains have to offer to us! :) Let's hear it for neuroscience!!!

Woohoooo!!! :D : D :D *bounces around the room... boing boing boing!!!*

P.S.: Missing my parents and my best buddy, clueless, today!!! Without you people, I wouldn't be where I am. Thank you for always believing the best in me and pushing me ahead in my life :) :) You rock my world! :D \m/

The Surgeon

I was super excited that I managed to do stereotactic surgeries on rats and actually got a pat on the back from my supervisor for that. He thought I performed them really well and would reach perfection with a little more practise. I was overjoyed, mainly because being good at rat surgeries means minimal discomfort for the animals. I feel guilty enough working with animals without having to cause them tremendous pain.

Today when I walked in, I got the news that one of the rats I had done surgery on died. He never woke up from the anesthesia shot. My supervisor speculated it was mainly due to the potency of the anesthetic that we use (which has a history of animals that don't wake up). He said that one of the rats he had done surgery on had also met with the same fate. But I feel personally responsible for the little guy's death, no matter what the supervisor thinks is the reason.

I turned to vegetarianism a few months ago to compensate me working with animals and sacrificing them to harvest their brains and collect data.

I'm not so sure if that alone is enough anymore. But I also dont know what else I can do to make up for killing animals in the name of science.

What bothers me the most is that if I continue to work in a lab dealing with animals, there will come a time when killing animals or having unsuccessful surgeries is just another day in the office. The day when I stop feeling bad for these animals and become dispassionate about the whole deal scares the crap out of me.

The worst part is, that day will come, for sure.

My Shitty Project

For somebody who whines a lot about ethical problems in the field of life sciences, I sure have surprised myself over the past few months. I never ever thought I would join a lab that had animal work, not even for a rotation. But here I am, after having done a rotation for 8 weeks with rats and mice, moving on to my next rotation, again with rats. And my kill score? Well, so far I haven't killed any all by myself. But I played a major major role in the sacrificing of 10 rats and 12 mice. If you think that's a lot of animals for just a rotation, you should hear some other stories from people in the field!

But for some strange reason, I've been attracted towards a neuroscience world. I had promised myself to stay away from anything glamourous or cliched in the field of life sciences, simply because I wanted to walk on the road less travelled and feel good about being different. I get pissed when somebody asks me what I do and then say, "Oh yeah, everybody is doing that now a days". But somehow, despite it being a glamourous field, I just went towards neuroscience like iron to a magnet! My work in these labs in a nutshell? In the previous lab, I was getting rats addicted to morphine and now in this lab, I deal cocaine to rats. No, I am not turning towards the dark world of drug dealing or doing drugs. Quite the opposite actually. I was studying the effects of addiction on nerve generation in the brain earlier and now I am studying why relapse rates are as high as 90% in cocaine addicts trying to go clean.

Here are some day to day, non-glamourous happenings in a addiction study lab

- I have rats pee and poop all over me every single day

- Evening showers are more meaningful now. I come back smelling like rat poop

- I have rats trying to bite me everyday because they know that I am the girl who takes them away from the cocaine

- I get super annoyed anytime somebody asks me, "so what if a drug addict joins the lab in order to try and steal some cocaine or whatever drugs you have in lab?". Probably I find it frustrating that I don't have a satisfactory answer to that.

- I spend a lot of time cleaning the rat cages each day after the experiments. Maybe I am ready to have a cat or a dog and to clean up after them!

- I don't think I will get a cat or a dog anytime soon because I am too busy taking care of my pet rats in lab. I'm a good master. I keep them happy by dealing drugs to them :-/ :-/

- Its sad to see a rat begging you for more drugs. Yes, rats get addicted too.

- Cocaine addicted rats are violent while morphine addicted rats are just... well... high... interesting difference in drug effects

- I've stopped asking for "coke" in cafeterias. It just seems wrong. I have started asking for "regular coke" instead. Come to think of it, that's also kinda disturbing

All in all, I have a pretty shitty project, in a literal sense, 16 rats pooping on me each day.

And I've never felt so satisfied about my work :D

Rats!

I have started my second rotation in a lab that works on a field that is almost totally alien to me... NEUROSCIENCE!!! I have been more of a protein biochemist who likes to express proteins in E.coli cells and then purify and characterize them. I have some knowledge on protein structure-function relations, protein folding, enzyme kinetics etc etc, but believe me, I stayed away from neuroscience.

So what inspired me to suddenly try this out? Suddenly out of the blue? Well, it was on somebody's recommendation that I went and met this professor. I figured, whats the harm in meeting. Its not like I am going to commit to anything, not even a rotation. So I took up an appointment and went to see her. And she turned out to be one of the best people I have ever met! Her love and enthusiasm for her work was so infectious, I just had to be a part of it! So I committed myself to joining her lab for a rotation... in spite of being neuro-illiterate, in spite of not having worked with animals, in spite of all the odds against me, I took a bold step forward (if I may say so myself)

And I find that I don't regret it! Its an awesome lab! And today I got to do something entirely new. I worked with mouse brain sections, put them in order and mounted them on slides, then I went with the grad student who will be mentoring me to handle rats! I held a real, live, white lab rat in my hand!!!! It was kinda ok, sorta like holding a tiny kitten (something that I am very much used to). And I have decided that I love the lab, love the prof, love the people and love the science.

But at the end of the day, we all know that nothing is perfect. There has to be a catch somewhere or the other.

Somehow I am wondering if the ethics behind using animal models will come in my way, should I eventually decide to join this lab long term... Will I be able to sleep with a peace of mind? Maybe I will get used to it, it didn't seem so bad today.

But the question still lingers on in my mind.... I guess only time will tell.

I will have to wait and see. Hope and pray

Grain of salt

Disclaimer: Post for crystallographers!

I have done my first rotation in a structural biology lab. And I have dabbled around with X-ray crystallography and NMR. I have come to learn that you can't always rely 100% on inferences made from crystal structures because the protein structure is not representative of the structure in solution. Bottom line, take in all the results and discussion from crystallography journal papers with a grain of salt.

I have also learnt that asking a crystallographer to take life with a grain of salt isn't really a good idea...

Because a grain of salt could be the difference between crystallization and precipitation! :-\

P.S.: another reason why cooking is better than lab... adding a few microlitres or milligrams extra of any component is not disastrous in kitchen. I can deal with bigger quantities and approximation instead of teeny tiny portions with accuracy :-<

The best place to be!

I have never seen professors so excited and enthusiastic about their work in NUS. Here, they are so passionate about what they do that they almost literally bounce around in their chair while explaining to you what they really do. Its pretty cool to be a grad student. Especially a grad student looking for rotation labs. I get to do three rotations and for that, instead of the prof interviewing me, I get to interview the prof and give them my verdict!!! Ain't that awesome?! :D Of course, it happens only once. After I pick a lab, it will be the other way around! But its really cool that these profs are ok with this and have no issues with being the one interviewed and tested by the students. It takes a lot of pressure off us grad students and makes the whole process of settling in more comfortable.

To be honest, the only reason I came here was because it was the only university that accepted me. At that time, I complained and cribbed about it. Today I realise that this has happened to me for a reason... a good reason. This is the place for me to be. You may not have heard about this university, but they do cutting edge research and have so many nobel laureates wandering about the corridors! Plus, loads of their alumni are nobel laureates and also holders of prestigious positions all over the world of academia! Its the biggest honor (notice the spelling!) for me to be in the same university where important discoveries that changed the face of biosciences were made!

Bottomline, I am happy as hell to be here. Even though it started as a no-option thing, I am thrilled that I ended up here instead of some ivy league college. The education that I get here is going to be so much more meaningful. And even though I was skeptical a few months back, after meeting up with several faculty, now I am very very very sure that the passion I had lost for science and research will find its way back into my heart. Because the love that the faculty here have for science is enough to inspire the student to be just as passionate about the field, if not more! This has gotta be the best research environment in the whole wide world!

Thanks to all the ivy leagues for rejecting my application! Seriously, I mean it. I am in a better place now because of that!

This is what I am meant to be doing, this is where I am supposed to be...

And I couldn't be happier (or luckier!!!) :) :) :)

You know you've worked too long in lab!

There is a group on facebook called "you know you've worked too long in lab when" and its absolutely hilarious for those of us who actually have spent insane hours in lab! I thought I would post a few features here for the enjoyment of my old buddies from undergrad who would know EXACTLY what this is all about :P The rest of you who read this, just enjoy whatever you can understand or relate to! ;)

You wonder what absolute alcohol tastes like with orange juice

You can't watch CSI without cursing at least one scientific inaccuracy

You use acronyms for everything and never stop to elaborate (That happens even to Singaporeans)

Liquid nitrogen is only about a 1/3 as dangerous as you thought (Yeah, to some people its not even 1/16 as dangerous as they thought!)

You've wondered why you can't drink distilled water in the lab - It should be clean? (Hehe, the million dollar question!)

You give the lab equipment motivational pep talks "Work for me today or i'll reprogram you with a fire axe" (been there, done that)

You've worked out that a trained chimp could probably do 90% of your job (*sigh*)

You have to check the web to find out what the weather is outside (OMG!!! This is so so so so true!)

People wearing shorts under a lab coat disturb you slightly as they look as though they might be naked underneath (Clueless and soleil should be able to relate to this! ;) )

Safety equipment is optional unless it makes you look cool (like cool red shades from the dark room!)

You can no longer spell normal words but have no trouble with spelling things like immunohistochemistry or deoxyribonucleic acid

Burning eyes, nose and throat indicate that you haven't actually turned on the fumehood/downdraft bench

Your slightly too fond of the smell of (pick one or many) Xylene/Agar/Ethanol/Undergraduates/Alcoholic handwash

you have made some kind of puppet out of a nitrile glove and kept it as a pet (I had one with a smiley face! it had cool hairstyle!)

You have an irresistible urge to rip your shirt off superman stylie cos it has press stud fasteners just like your lab coat.....Most often occurring as you walk through a door just like exiting the lab (This reminds me of Soleil! The only one with a press stud fastener lab coat!)

You still get amusement out of "freezing" things in liquid nitrogen! (Clueless and I once froze a glove for the heck of it :P)

When you rejoice when grabbing a handfull of eppendorfs/bijous/anything and it turns outs to be the exact number you needed (Absolutely love the feeling!!!)

Your nose invariably itches when you're doing mucky stuff with your hands so you develop the habit of scratching it on your upper arm. Unfortunately you sometimes carry this habit over to real life, where it looks like you're sniffing your armpits (Trying to find a clean bit of lab coat can be fun as well!!! Disgusting, i know!)

When you start making patterns in your pipette tip box as you take the tips out (This is SOOOO me!!!!! :D :D )

You've seen how far away you can hit a target with a squirty water bottle or seeing how far away from the bin i can fire pipette tips (I made a pipette tip tower once! It reached the ceiling!)

When you've got that callus on the side of your thumb from opening PCR tubes (Soleil, we can feel your pain! It was normal eppendorfs for us!)

You open the toothpaste with one hand.

When you hear tween, you think of the surfactant not the age group

For you, media is something which increases your culture

You use the word "aliquot" in regular sentences (do you still use it, clueless?!)

Sometimes you momentarily vanish from social activities because of a time point. (can be annoying!)

You're very good at diluting things (exceptionally talented)

You consider a green laser pointer to be science bling (Isn't it??? :P)

You've used Kimwipes as Kleenex (only from unopened boxes!)

A timer clipped to the hip is not only practical, but dead sexy (definitely is!)

You think the following is a quality insult: "I've seen cells more competent than you!" (The best I have heard!)

Fashionably geeky

Its been the oddest month for me. I have had to do so much of shopping in preparation for starting a new life in a new country. I am a firm believer of the whole "travel light" thingy. But this time, it seems like there is no way I can stick to that! Well, I could have... but suddenly I decided to have a complete wardrobe makeover.

So shopping has been a new experience for me. My definition of "tops" are no longer limited to round neck and polo neck t-shirts. In fact, this time I bought only one or two of those. I suddenly find myself drawn towards the girly stuff in the stores... much to my surprise! My earring collection has gone from 0 to 10 in just one week (I went on a earring shopping spree this weekend! Bought at least five there!). I rediscovered earrings that were gifted to me by clueless in my second year and also some that I had bought for myself in malaysia. I have more than one pair of shoes now and one of them has a significant amount of heel. Even my reeboks are girly with a purple streak here and there. In short, "machogirl" might not quite describe me completely anymore.

In this complete makeover, I have also taken notice of stuff on TV. Somehow, whenever the advertisement for lip gloss, hair oil, conditioners, face creams etc etc are aired, I noticed that these career women are never ever scientists. They may be successful TV anchors, or fashion designers, or business women (who by the way, dont seem to do anything other than wear pretty formals and shake their boss' hand) but they never show a glamourous woman in a labcoat or something with her face so radiant and her hair so silky running around in lab. Somehow, all the girls who are either aspiring to be scientist or who already are scientists come in health drink ads!

Why is that? Can't I be fashionable and still be a scientist? Does that make me an anomaly?

Just a random, shallow thought from a geeky nerd who is learning the ways of dressing well :P (and totally loving it!)

For the sake of progress

It was a microbiology lecture and we noticed in one of the lecture slides, there was a picture of a fridge. We were wondering why would there be a picture of a fridge in a microbiology class especially when we thought the latest fridges were designed to keep food fresher for longer. Then the professor reaches the slide and says

This is a fridge made in Japan which can not only cool food, but also keep food warm so that husbands who come back home late from work can have a nice hot meal before going to bed.

Half the class was awestruck by the design and the idea. Until he said...

Think about this for a minute, a fridge connected to a warm incubator, at temperatures ideal for microbial growth

The whole class (full of microbiology experts) got grossed out. Then he proceeded to say

Technological advances are aimed at making our lives easier and more comfortable. But what we don't realise is that each time we introduce something new, we are modifying the environment around us. This new fridge may give nice and warm dinners, but it can also give some unknown microbe which has been incubating with your food. Today we see the increase in the number of infectious diseases, new and re-emergent. Why do you think this is? With the introduction of the plane, we made travel faster, but we also gave a new route of transmission for the spread of diseases. Now anything can become pandemic

A chill down our spine.

It got me thinking. All new technology poses a threat to the natural order of things, not just microbiology, but other things too like environment, and our very own health. The system that nature has devised with such care is so precise. Take a look at this planet, all the living beings that roam, the plants that grow, look at how everything is interconnected, look at not just how we are connected to each other through the worldwide web, look at how we are connected to this planet, the whole system. Any new technology will always have two faces to it, a positive impact on our lives as well as a negative impact. Nuclear power gave us an alternate energy source, but it also gave us the atom bomb. And this particular exam is the most cliched and over-used to prove this point. There are so many more.

We can't stop progress. We need it. As a species, I don't think we can live without it. We need the comfort. We need the speed. I don't exactly know why. But for some reason we do. I know that I do. I cannot imagine my life without the internet, cell phones, cars and modern medicine. I don't even know if I would have dared to venture out of my country if I wasn't assured of being within reach of my family every single day via phone and internet. I would not have opted to apply to the US for Ph.D out of fear of distance from my home. And that's a fact.

As a budding scientist, I am forced to ask the question...

Where so we decide that progress has to be nurtured for the benefit of mankind or even better... for the benefit of this planet? And where does progress, for the sake of progress, need to be nipped in the bud? (a line that some of my fellow Harry Potter fans should recognize!)

If progress is a double edged sword, where do I draw the line? How do I decide what kind of science I want to pursue for my Ph.D, my post doc and then later, to dedicate my life to? What kind of impact will my life have in the world? Will my science make it a better place.... or worse?

P.S. An idea that I came across in a Michael Crichton book remains one of my most favourite... This planet and its living system were here before us, constantly evolving and adapting, and will surely survive any folly of mankind. The question is never really whether we are destroying the planet, the question is, are we destroying ourselves... It's kinda humbling to look at it this way, isn't it?

The Disturbed Scientist

I am probably over reacting. Its a pretty well known fact that I tend to over react to loads of stuff. But this really disturbs me.

Its freaky that just one week after I wrote my post on using animals models to test drugs, I had to deal with one myself. I cut open a mouse. A cute little white mouse. Some guy sitting on the same lab bench as me pretty much annoyed me when he said "hey! This little fella looks like Stuart Little!". Dude! We are about to cut it open! Don't make me get attached to the poor thing! The lab is a huge one. There are about 8-10 benches in the lab and each bench has 12 students sitting in groups of 4. Every group got one white mouse (already killed) to open up and extract cells from. Thats around 30 mice! We extracted cells from the body cavity, we removed the thymus and spleen of the mouse and extracted cells from there too. We had to use iron particles to isolate the antibodies and all. We coated the slides and sat down to observe the cells. There weren't any. All we saw was iron. We turned to the lab assistant and find out that the iron particles they gave us were really old. They were no longer capable of isolating cells with antibodies. Basically it was a failed experiment. We asked what we were supposed to say in the report about the experiment, to which we were told there was no report required for that lab. We sorta realised nobody took that lab too seriously. 30 mice killed and we didn't even get to look at cells! The whole thing seemed pointless.

As fate would have it, I had another encounter with animals this week. Fish. We had to inject DNA into adult fish, just beneath the skin. For that, we needed to catch fish from a tank, put them in another tank containing stuff that pretty much knocks out the fish, take them out, put them on paper towels, inject them with DNA (that is supposed to express some protein which will make their muscles glow. Don't ask me why we injected it. Maybe they just wanted pretty fish) and put them back into a recovery tank where they would wake up. Later, we injected stuff into fish embryo. I made a huge mistake just now, lying in the dark, unable to sleep, and wondering how the fish must have felt after they woke up. I remember how painful tetanus shots (for example) were even when administered by a doctor. We are all just students in the lab who have never handled needles before. The first shot that I gave to one of the fish sort peeled off a bit of skin. In certain other groups, the fish started bleeding. I don't even want to try to imagine what it must have been like to be in the place of that fish. Some of them never woke up in the recovery tank and many, the lab assistant told us, would not survive the week, even if they did wake up in the recovery tank.

As I said before, I am probably over reacting, but I can't help but to feel disturbed and even though it was never my idea to cut open animals for lab (and I am pretty much forced to do what the lab protocols say if I want grades), I can't help but to feel guilty about hurting (or killing) animals. I mean, I know its just a learning process, but I just don't see the point! The techniques are so simple, I am sure we can learn them just when are about to embark on our proper research career. We aren't even going to use these results anywhere else! And 80% of the students there, aren't even going to pursue life sciences after leaving university! What a waste of animal life!

A fine life scientist I am going to make. I looked at zebrafish embryos. They are just tiny cells. An undifferentiated mass that can hardly constitute an "organism". But it still disturbed me to inject them. How am I going to manage stem cell research when I come across that (as I know I definitely will)? All these days I thought my stance on stem cell research was clear. It didn't matter that we use stem cells to save lives. Its not technically "killing" since they are a mass of undifferentiated cells. I thought its only when the embryo develops at a later stage that the ethical questions kick in. But handling single celled embryos (basically stem cells) sorta changed my perspective. Now I am not so sure whats "ethical" and whats not.

All I know is that I am feeling really bad that I had to do those things I did in the lab. So bad that I am not able to sleep (hence, as I always do, I am using my blog as a place to let out my guilt and frustration. Takes a load off my chest). All of a sudden, I am not so sure about where I am headed, not because of my interests and all. I still think that this area is a damn interesting one. But if it involves killing animals to develop drugs for us humans, I am not so sure I want to do this anymore.

Maybe its just a phase. Maybe I will learn later on that there is a reason for all this. "The Greater Good" or whatever. I'll most likely get over it. Maybe I'll even come to accept that animal models will help us save countless lives later. But I don't think I will ever accept the killing of so many animals for an undergraduate lab course as some "right" or "ethical" or even for the "greater good of imparting knowledge to students".