Published online 8 July 2009
Postdoc journal
Expect the unexpected
Bryan Venters
Bryan Venters is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Eukaryotic Gene Regulation at Pennsylvania State University, University Park.
Lab life requires vigilance.
Labs are often serene, orderly places. But disaster may lurk. Recently, I was at my desk, happily reading an article about how transcription remodelling factors regulate nucleosome dynamics, when I heard a commotion next door. I ran over to find that a pipe had burst. Water was spewing everywhere, flooding the lab within minutes.
Researchers abandoned their experiments as everyone worked together to staunch the inundation. Someone built a makeshift dam while others mopped up gallons and gallons of water, pouring it all down the sink. Finally, after one of us found and shut off the emergency valve, the deluge slowed and stopped. We all sighed with relief when we found that no equipment had been damaged.
That wasn't our only near-disaster. A few months ago, the -80 °C freezer in our lab broke, triggering a mad scramble to transfer precious antibodies, strains and reagents to a backup freezer. A lab's deep freezer often contains years of research. And then there's the terror of losing years of stored digital data to a hard-drive crash. Last year a friend of mine had a hard-drive malfunction, lost part of his thesis and had to start again from scratch.
What have I learned from these unfortunate situations? Be vigilant about protecting laboratory reagents and research data. And don't be lulled into a false sense of security by a quiet, tranquil lab bathed in the soft hum of a working freezer. Expect the unexpected.
Postdoc Journal Keepers 2009
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Julia BoughnerJulia Boughner is a postdoc in evolutionary developmental biology at the University of Calgary, Canada.
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Bryan VentersBryan Venters is a postdoc in biochemistry and molecular biology at Pennsylvania State University.
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Joanne IsaacJoanne Isaac was a postdoc studying the effect of climate change on biodiversity at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia. She is now in the United States so that her husband can complete a postdoc.
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Sam WalcottSam Walcott is a postdoc in theoretical biophysics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.
