The spur of the moment

I have moved to this place for more than 2 months now. Just like I had expected, I'm getting more and more used to this environment now. I get along with my colleagues well, picked up a few new words here and there, and have finally successfully performed PCR with clear distinct bands *super proud*.

A little brief description on how my work is, for those of you who are curious.

It started off like this. People collect soil samples. From the soil, microorganisms are isolated, grown to pure colonies like these. There are several types; fungi, yeast, actinomycetes and the one that I am in charge of, bacteria. One of the many reasons why I like handling them is because of their lovely colours:

Soo from these babies I have to kill them so as to extract their DNA to identify them (i.e to give them names). After extracting their DNA, I amplify the sequences using PCR and send the products for sequencing to get their ID.

Now about the PCR part, I got really frustrated during one period of time where my PCR was super duper clean, not even a single band. I would be happy even if the negative control showed bands. After several reruns, I nearly gave up until someone found out that it was the problem of one of the reagents. Soon enough, I got a clear definite picture of the PCR run. Imagine the extreme disappointment after retries and finally getting bands, I leapt like a little kid around the lab. It felt like some springs had been stuck to my feet and I just literally bounced out to the lab telling everyone I had bands for my PCR. And yes, I didn't even care what others will think about me because you see, I was quite desperate in getting results already. Below is a picture showing a part of my workplace, and some of my colleagues

That's basically a very brief description of my work now. If you've not been wondering why I named the title of this post as "The Spur of the Moment", please wonder now.

This blog post is titled so because
1. I haven't been writing for a long long time and when an inspiration like this comes, it is definitely the spur in my head.
2. On a side note, do you know that love at first sight occurs in the first 10 seconds of eye contact, or 8.2 seconds to be exact?? Interested to know more?? Click below!!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5046517/8.2-seconds-needed-to-fall-in-love.html

TATA.........TATA box i meant =P

Till next time, whenever the next 'spur' will be