Monday, April 12, 2010

A haiku-like post

Lab in quandary
Protein expression zero
Bad ampicillin

7 comments:

Goose said...

I thought you'd got past the bad ampicillin...?

Odyssey said...

It's a post-quandry haiku.

mouthfulofpancake said...

What is ampicillin? Please excuse my ignorance. Is it related in any way to penicillin?

Odyssey said...

Yes, it's an antibiotic related to penicillin. We use bacteria (a harmless strain of E. coli) to make (express) our proteins. The ampicillin is used to make sure we only grow protein-making bacteria. Otherwise you get a lot of bacteria growing, but very few making protein. Hence, bad ampicillin leads to little protein.

Patchi said...

In my PhD lab we got so tired of Amp problems that we switched to Carbenicillin. Was worth the higher price tag.

JollyRgr said...

Naughty, naughty ampicillin!

Go and sit on the naughty mat!

:-)

Ink said...

Loving this haiku...especially the fact that it's part of the "post-quandry haiku" genre. :) Bravo.

Though I hope the ampicillin straightens up and flies right.