Scientific Advancement

A number of us in lab have papers in manuscript that hopefully will be submitted/published soon. In the interim we were talking about the current competition in science -- how it's changed from the past and how it might change once we all graduate and (maybe) have our own labs.

The topic of housekeeping genes was brought up at lab meeting recently. Housekeeping genes are always expressed and we use it as a marker for (c)DNA quality. Usually we run a reaction with just one housekeeping gene, but my advisor stated at the meeting that some journals request that authors run their experiments with two or more, just to double-check, because sometimes these genes are not expressed at a constant level, even though we expect them to. While this seems like a minor change, many times reviewers will send a paper back with a list of control experiments that need to be done, which may take anywhere from a week or two to a couple months.

In my senior year of undergrad, I took a class called "Evolution, Development, and Genetics" (i.e. "evo-devo"); it was a discussion-based class where we read papers every week and then talked about trends in the field. One of the first things we read was a Science paper that was considered the founder of evo-devo. Our assignment for this paper was to rewrite the abstract because the original one was only a sentence long, and in today's standards, is unacceptable. The paper itself proposed some really new ideas, but in today's standards, was lacking in terms of data. The authors basically ran a series of proteins on a gel. Which makes me wonder -- do we need to do more work today to get published...compared to, say, 40 years ago?

Science has advanced rapidly in the past few years, which I think is the main reason why it takes "more" work to publish in a good journal. One of the best examples is PCR, which used to take (literally) all day. At that time, the researcher would sit in front of multiple hot-water baths, and drop the tubes in, wait a minute or two, and go on to the next water bath. Oh, and they had to add fresh reagent after each cycle... for about 30 cycles. Now, we just stick all the tubes in a machine and have the machine do it while we go work on something else. People are coming up with new ideas and new techniques all the time, and everything points to increased efficiency.

I have a feeling that 30 years from now, I'll look back at my thesis and say "is that all I did??"

Data Dump

The professor next door teaches an upper-level undergrad class on mammalian endocrinology. Last month he asked me to give a guest lecture in his class about my research, with a request to spend at least 50% of my lecture on background material before segueing into current information. I was (kinda sorta) starting on a literature review for lab, so I made my slides based on the review draft and thought I was good to go... until I practiced it in front of my lab.

One of my labmates said that I essentially zipped through 4 papers' worth of data in five minutes, which would be too fast for the audience, who , according to my labmate, would be drifting in and out of consciousness. My advisor said to make the slides more textbook-ish and not show too many cutting-edge things. That's when I found out the statement "because it's cool" is not a good enough reason to show/talk about a specific data set.
I was surprised at the amount of information I had to remove from my first set of slides. I think that "research seminar mode" has become my new default, where I give minimal, but crucial, background information and then immediately jump into what's new. This way, I don't have to feel like I'm repeating myself a million times in order to get a point across.

That being said, it's been difficult for me to realize what constitutes a data dump for an audience of undergrads. During my own undergrad career, one of my pet peeves was when the instructor would write complete sentences (paragraphs, even) on their slides and spend all hour reading off the screen. My issue seems to be the opposite; I'll put six rectangles on the slide and say that they're hormone receptors. Then I'll start talking about how the receptors work, which leads me to signaling pathway A and how it works. After that, if I really start to lose myself, I'll start talking about homologies within species. One of my other labmates said it best: "If you were an undergrad, would you REALLY care that tyrosine 1127 in species X is responsible for signaling?"

***
My lecture was on the morning of February 14. The professor had a last-minute trip out of town, so I essentially took over the class. Everyone seemed really engaged and I didn't get funny looks, so I assume it went well.  :-)
***
The title of this post comes from a phrase that an emeritus professor introduced us to when he was talking about his grad school days at MIT. It's when you go through so much data per unit time that the audience can't process it all fast enough to ask questions (i.e. question your technique).

Impulsivity

Things haven't been quite the same since I came back from overseas. I'm not sure if it was the concept of vacation that threw me off from my usual work schedule, or the fact that after I came back, most of the experiments I ran yielded negative results...which leaves me feeling like I'm scrambling not just to produce something, but also to get some solid footing on where to go next. Unfortunately, that can lead to impulsively doing experiments and going around in circles wondering why things don't work. The good news is that I think I've calmed down enough to figure out what I've been doing wrong in terms of experiment design and technique, so there's some solace that things will work out "correctly".

The other part I've noticed lately is how I have a tendency to zone out in a non-lab setting. The best example would be two weeks ago, when someone I know was visiting the city with their boyfriend, their high school friend, and the latter's married friends. It was a slightly awkward position for me to be in (especially when someone said "everyone's getting married or pregnant!"), but for most of the time I felt like I was mentally absent. My half-baked explanation is that I had spent the entire day in lab making a reagent, and was getting antsy on when I could go back and finish it. My mind doesn't wander nearly as much when I'm actually in lab, but then when I go home, I start thinking about research again (especially why things aren't working the way I want them to), which makes me slightly hypertensed.

I've been able to clear my head with dance class and running, the reason being that I can't think and dance (or think and run) at the same time unless I screw up the choreography or slow down my pace. I'm hoping this whole restless-impulsiveness phase goes away soon. Either that or I'm going to run 5 miles to relax.