Duct Tape, WD-40, and Donuts

Well, I’ve only been back in the lab for two days, doing *gasp* lab work(!), and I’ve already destroyed the lab. Shhhhhh don’t tell Nelson… or Mattias… or Filipe…

I followed all the right procedures and protocols, even yelling, “Stand back! I’m about to do science!!” to  everyone in the lab, which happens to be nobody at the moment (apparently I come back, so everyone leaves). Ok, really, all I’m doing right now is extracting DNA from my kelp samples I collected this summer. It’s pretty neat stuff. While I was out there, I took a small piece from each kelp blade, put that piece in a 2mL test tube, and added a bunch of silica gel to the tube, which rapidly dries out the sample, basically mummifying the tissue and preserving the DNA in it.

In order to extract the DNA from these dried samples, I have to physically break down the tissue. I could chew each sample up, but that wouldn’t taste very good plus there would be too much spit involved. So I use this massive vibrator we have down in the basement to pulverize the tissue. It works really well. Well, today, I went to go use the vibrator, and I blew the fuse (it’s a big vibrator). Not an ideal situation. I need to extract DNA!!

Well, I’m not an electrician, but I remember my daddy telling me anything can be fixed with a little duct tape and WD-40. So I did what any respectable, budding graduate student would do, and duct taped the hell out of the fuse box and the vibrator, and sprayed it down with WD-40. That didn’t work… So I thought, “Hmm… what else might work? Well, Mattias always says donuts are the answer to everything, so I must try donuts next”. I’m not really sure how to apply donuts to electrical stuff… maybe I’ll squish a jelly donut into the outlets… that might work…

-Heidi

PS Donuts this week are brought to you by Dr. Hutz. Dr. Hutz is from Salzburg, Austria. Before he came over to the US, and became an extremely accomplished biologist, he was a mountain yodeler. He holds the recorded for the most mountains yodeled on in Austria (all of them), he can out yodel Julie Andrews, and he once saved a small Austrian village by scaring away a herd of trolls with his mighty yodel.