快乐烦恼都是如此简单

Thursday, happy. Reasons:

a) First sunny day after three days of cold rain.
b) Protein expression worked super. Learned how to make it super.
c) First purification step worked super.
d) I jogged 1.5 miles after two weeks of zero exercise.
e) dogs were cute and sweet.

Friday morning, happy. Reasons:

a) One PI had a new baby girl.
b) Another PI had a successful heart transplant surgery.
c) Yummy breakfast.

Friday afternoon, frustrated. Reason:

In the second step of protein purification, where did 75% of my input go? No leaking was visible around the lines on FPLC.

Frustration lasted for two hours until we spotted liquid in the injection superloop jacket. Sure it was protein, and it took another two hours to confirm it was OUR protein. Damn superloop. Blamed the last person who used it. Of course it was someone from another lab.

Took another 30 minutes to convince myself to fix the superloop rather than using a smaller one twice. Took one hour to realize it was the O-rings that caused the problem and replaced them.

In the end, a two-hour run took us about 14 hours to finish. But I was happy because I figured out what the problem was.