After months of procrastination, new research into the least comfortable of all possible work environments has begun. What we have here (on the right) is an anaerobic chamber. Inside is an atmosphere of nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen. On good days, not enough hydrogen to make the thing an explosion hazard. Note the large, thick, clumsy rubber gloves. I spent today setting up protein crystallization trays in there, which involves lots of fine manipulation of coverslips and pipeting of microliters of liquid. My wrists feel like I just played the Moto Perpetuo on the mandocello and my neck is considering taking out a restraining order. Blegh.
On the plus side, I have some crystals already, which is promising... I also seem to have screwed up the reduction of my flavins, from which we learn that the semiquinone of FMN is red and that dithionite needs to be buffered. You live and learn.
2 comments:
Wow, I gave up science-ing because the stereomicroscopes gave me splitting headaches. You, sir, are tougher than me.
And from this angle you can't even see the microscope that's in the chamber!
It's only really tolerable because I don't have to do it very often. One thing I can say about my job: I rarely do the same thing 2 days in a row. Never a dull moment.
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