Yo, ze.

So, the past week at work I've been working on florescent staining techniques. We have this anti-body that attaches to BiP (which I mentioned in a previous post) and glows neon green when a blue light is shined on it. The thing I hate about staining is the incredibly tedious work that goes into it. It is probably so easy a caveman can do it (derp) but you sorta lose your mind and screw up some how. The whole process takes about 9 hours, though it is usually split up into two days of work. The worst part though is every three freaking minutes, you have to make the slides into a different chemical or apply some kind of antibody on it. You can't go off and do something else for most of the staining process. You have to sit and wait, thinking to your self for a majority of the time. GAH! Even thinking about it makes me angry.

By the way, this is what my staining looks like. That is when it works.

Anyway, I did a total of three full stainings. The first time went okay. The problem was that the slides had too much background and non-specific staining(which is like fake green that gets in the way of the real green, so you can't tell if your looking at BiP or just some overexposed bit of cell). The second time, I totally f***ed up and added anti-bodies to the control bits of the slides (which aren't supposed to have anti-bodies on them, you know, since they're controls) and was too agressive on the slides and washed the tissues off. But the third time was perfect. All the slides had barely any background and non-specific staining, which was a huge pick-me-up for me and Aparna.

With that said, next week I take those amazing slides and take pictures for the journal and the grant and other sciency stuff.