Fungus is not fun

One of the most exciting things that I have done since I came to college was to start working in a scientific research lab here on campus. What I didn't realize was just how difficult research can be. Aside from the huge amount of background knowledge that is required just to perform elementary lab procedures, there is the huge amount of knowledge required to be able to figure out just what the heck you're supposed to be doing. Even after you know all of that stuff, there's still a lot that can go wrong, and in most cases, it will go wrong.

I work with mouse neurons on a weekly basis, and these cells are extremely picky; they have to be at just the right temperature, pH, and nutrient levels. The most important thing, however, is that everything has to be kept sterile. I have to always be extremely careful whenever I'm working with anything that gets even close to our cultures, or everything will be lost. On several occasions, I spent about 5 hours one day preparing and culturing neurons only to look at my cultures the next day and find that all of the dishes are bright yellow (they should be red-orange, the yellow color indicates bacterial contamination), or to see huge fungal colonies in the middle of the dishes. In either case, I have to bleach my cultures, which not only makes me feel like I wasted two days of work, but I also wasted close to $100 worth of resources as well.

In spite of all this, working in this lab is something that I really like to do, and I'm not likely to give it up any time soon. Here's the link to the lab website:http://www.anatomy.wisc.edu/Dent/index.htm
It needs to be updated, and most of the videos don't work, but it still gives a good idea of what we do.