The Value of Time

When it comes to my first laboratory experiences, I'll admit that I was pretty spoiled. My first research experience outside of undergraduate course-related bench work was at The Institute for Genomic Research, one of J. Craig Ventner's well-funded research institutions. During my ten months as a research intern, I was taught that time was considered to be more valuable than cost, in the sense that if one method was pricier but took less time, it was a worthwhile investment. While there was a limit to the amount of funding available, when it came to everyday things in the lab, it was no problem. Instead of running agarose gels which can take some time depending on the size of fragments, we used a BioAnalyzer chip. When preparing samples, I was taught to always prepare more than actually necessary -- after all, if one of your Eppendorf tubes somehow is knocked over, you'll have a spare, instead of having to go back and repeat everything the next day. In addition to funding, we were spoiled in terms of general lab maintenance. If glassware was used, it was just placed in a plastic bin, and the next day it was back on the shelf, sparking clean and autoclaved. In fact, it wasn't until I started my current laboratory rotation that I even actually saw an autoclave with my own eyes (don't worry, I am completely despoiled now, and am a pro at autoclaving my own glassware and all the trash from the lab). My time at TIGR was, to date, the best laboratory experience I have ever had, not just because of the funding, but also because I truly enjoyed what I was doing, and the Howard Hughes fellow under whom I was working took the time to actually explain things to me and let me do some thinking on my own. My senior year as an undergrad, I did research at the National Cancer Institute. While not funded to the extent of TIGR, the lab still did not find itself pinching pennies at every corner. Once again, the general attitude seemed to be that time was considered to be more costly than supplies -- after all, if you can get more experiments done and generate more data, then there is a better chance of securing a grant.
Then I entered graduate school. My first rotation was in the best-funded research laboratory of the entire university, so the experiences were similar to my previous ones. The expensive equipment was available for my use, even though it would be much cheaper to do the same experiments by hand. My second rotation (the lab in which I will be staying for my thesis), however, is slightly different. It's not that the lab has no money, but just that it is much more cost-conscious than any other in which I have worked. Over the past two weeks, I have been busy attempting to make sense of a GST-CBP plasmid sent from another lab, which is the positive-control in an RHA pulldown experiment that I am doing. However, the lab did not send a map (and actually apparently couldn't 'find' the plasmid either, so they just sent crude cell lysate) and so, after a few literature searches, was able to identify the vector used for the plasmid and the amino acid sequence of the fragment of CBP. After generating what I thought was a correct plasmid map, I went to work doing a few restriction enzyme digests. Using my training from previous labs, I made a larger reaction mixture than necessary. Although a mini-gel will only hold 10ul, I used 40ul for my total volume reaction, just out of habit since this was what I was originally taught. The fourth-year student in the lab, who has truly been a savior in terms of helping me with questions and not laughing or calling me stupid when I do things incorrectly, pointed out that if I was only going to run 10ul on a gel, and the only purpose was to check the size of the fragments and I wouldn't need the digested pieces for anything else, it was wasting both the DNA and the expensive restriction enzymes to make more than necessary. Following his advice, I started using a 10ul total reaction volume. Naturally, I pour my a gel for the thousandth time, let it solidify, load it up, turn on the power source, set it to 90V, watch for the bubbles, and walk away. Twenty minutes later I return, and the gel is floating up off the bottom of the gel box, and all my DNA has somehow spilled off. Since, for the first time in my life, I only made the exact amount necessary, I was stuck repeating the digestion. Thankfully the whole process only took about another three hours, but somewhere, the biomedical research gods are looking down on me and laughing.

Also, for those of you who need a little help getting energized before the big game, might I suggest (complete with sound, so don't forget to turn on the speakers!):
The Original Version
The Playoff Version