Some of the “furniture” & “appliances” I’ve shown you/will show you through #EquippedToExperiment may seem foreign, but there are many things in my lab 🏠 you might have in your own 🏠 (though we might not always use them in the same way as you do) THREAD #FamiliarFurnishings 1/n
— Brianna Bibel (@biochem_bri) April 27, 2018
Does your 🏠 have a microwave? So does my lab 🏠! But we’d never heat food in it! Instead, we mainly use it to “cook” agarose gels to 👀 at DNA. Agarose is a type of sugar & we boil it into a solution we pour into a tray & let harden #FamiliarFurnishings #EquippedToExperiment n/n pic.twitter.com/p5BuQlAcHK
— Brianna Bibel (@biochem_bri) April 27, 2018
We also probably both have refrigerators. We often refer to them as “4C's” (their temperature in degrees Celcius). #FamiliarFurnishings #EquippedToExperiment n/n pic.twitter.com/UVEiYkkceK
— Brianna Bibel (@biochem_bri) April 27, 2018
Our lab 🏠 also has “deli fridges” like you might find in a grocery store (we house our protein purification systems in them) and a walk-in “cold room” like you might find in a warehouse store (my least favorite room in my lab🏠) . #FamiliarFurnishings #EquippedToExperiment n/n pic.twitter.com/JPOSL1r2HW
— Brianna Bibel (@biochem_bri) April 27, 2018
We also have freezers. LOTS of freezers. Many of them are “normal” freezers like you might have – we have big & little ones scattered around our lab 🏠. We call these “-20’s” because we keep them at -20°C #FamiliarFurnishings #EquippedToExperiment n/n pic.twitter.com/qgS0pZMrln
— Brianna Bibel (@biochem_bri) April 27, 2018
These other freezers are probably MUCH colder than freezers you have in your 🏠. These “-80’s” are set to -80°C and we use them for long-term storage and storing sensitive samples. #FamiliarFurnishings #EquippedToExperiment n/n pic.twitter.com/8iD1DXee6U
— Brianna Bibel (@biochem_bri) April 27, 2018
Another “kitchen-like” appliance – the sink! Most of our sinks have three faucet handles – hot and cold like a usual sink, and then an extra faucet for de-ionized (DI) water that has most of its salts taken out #FamiliarFurnishings #EquippedToExperiment n/n pic.twitter.com/NSVDhjrtmZ
— Brianna Bibel (@biochem_bri) April 27, 2018
If we need even purer water, we have “milliQ” water that goes through an additional set of filters and then our media maker puts containers of it in our lab. #FamiliarFurnishings #EquippedToExperiment n/n pic.twitter.com/wk1WlxATgx
— Brianna Bibel (@biochem_bri) April 27, 2018
And if “milliQ” isn’t pure enough, we have water that comes in small bottles and is guaranteed to be free of RNAse & DNAses (proteins that can chew up RNA and DNA). #FamiliarFurnishings #EquippedToExperiment n/n pic.twitter.com/e5oWxhllxf
— Brianna Bibel (@biochem_bri) April 27, 2018
A couple other things you might have in your kitchen: aluminum foil's great 4 keeping light away from light-sensitive solutions & temporarily sealing bottles that go into our autoclave (like a really hot dishwasher for sterilization) #FamiliarFurnishings #EquippedToExperiment n/n pic.twitter.com/q1RdbWOgsb
— Brianna Bibel (@biochem_bri) April 27, 2018
You also might have cling wrap. It’s great for keeping the gels we pour and wrap in wet paper towels from drying out. #FamiliarFurnishings #EquippedToExperiment n/n pic.twitter.com/H7AHHSgabX
— Brianna Bibel (@biochem_bri) April 27, 2018
We also have a thing called Parafilm that is like cling wrap but thicker, stretchier, and less cling-y. It’s AWESOME (one of my favorite things in my lab 🏠) and we use it to seal Petri dishes, etc. #FamiliarFurnishings #EquippedToExperiment n/n pic.twitter.com/eA3hi5GJit
— Brianna Bibel (@biochem_bri) April 27, 2018
You probably have this in your kitchen too – sodium chloride (NaCl) (aka table SALT) – hopefully you don’t go through as much of it as we do… #FamiliarFurnishings #EquippedToExperiment n/n pic.twitter.com/fthm2wSTYd
— Brianna Bibel (@biochem_bri) April 27, 2018
You might also have funnels like we do #FamiliarFurnishings #EquippedToExperiment n/n pic.twitter.com/y8qD1RfVH8
— Brianna Bibel (@biochem_bri) April 27, 2018
A probably unintended use of a plastic tube – helping focus light when orienting crystals in the path of x-ray beams #FamiliarFurnishings #EquippedToExperiment n/n pic.twitter.com/UNLTP2A0ib
— Brianna Bibel (@biochem_bri) April 27, 2018
We try to keep our lab 🏠 clean, but we make a lot of messes! Fantastik cleaner is fantastic at cleaning up many of them. #FamiliarFurnishings #EquippedToExperiment n/n pic.twitter.com/fXiW4soAka
— Brianna Bibel (@biochem_bri) April 27, 2018
And when we need to disinfect, we have bleach. We express our proteins in bacteria and insect cells and, once we remove the cells, we disinfect the media they grew in with bleach in a giant graduated cylinder. #FamiliarFurnishings #EquippedToExperiment n/n pic.twitter.com/TP2GgcyErP
— Brianna Bibel (@biochem_bri) April 27, 2018
Many of the things I’ve shown so far you might have in in your kitchen. This one might be in your garage – RainX! Good 4 keeping raindrops off windshields & polyacrylamide gels from sticking to the glass plates we pour them between. #FamiliarFurnishings #EquippedToExperiment n/n pic.twitter.com/2BGmKa1fSC
— Brianna Bibel (@biochem_bri) April 27, 2018
Now to your office – we use normal office supplies – especially sharpies – we have to label LOTS! We mostly use regular sharpies but we also have special lab markers that are alcohol-resistant & multiple colors 4 color-coding #FamiliarFurnishings #EquippedToExperiment n/n pic.twitter.com/nacyZbLMoj
— Brianna Bibel (@biochem_bri) April 27, 2018
Speaking of color coding, we also have colored labeling tape in addition to traditional scotch tape (good for taping printouts into lab notebooks) and packing tape (good for temporarily sealing plates (and packages)). #FamiliarFurnishings #EquippedToExperiment n/n pic.twitter.com/iLtIC8z2Qb
— Brianna Bibel (@biochem_bri) April 27, 2018
And while we’re getting sticky… we have epoxy glue that we use when preparing pins for crystal collecting https://t.co/wN3GmqpLvV #FamiliarFurnishings #EquippedToExperiment n/n pic.twitter.com/Hpud3bWJ6x
— Brianna Bibel (@biochem_bri) April 27, 2018
You probably only stick lead (though hopefully not actual lead) in your mechanical ✏️ , but we also stick in “micro tools” that help us fish crystals out of 💧💧#FamiliarFurnishings #EquippedToExperiment n/n pic.twitter.com/Jt62ph2Qyy
— Brianna Bibel (@biochem_bri) April 27, 2018
