Looking Back and Looking Ahead

Last week was stressful and incredibly exciting for me. First off, I completed the experiment I have been preparing for a local high school, and saw it yield very respectable results (considering the constraints we faced). Secondly, I received my OpenPCR kit.

The school experiment was my first real foray into the DIYBio world, and showed me that with enough determination it is possible to do things that at first glance would seem impossible under the circumstances, as well as showing me that it is possible to engage lay-people in advanced science if you use simple concise language and allow them to actually participate in the science and see tangible results. I'll be writing a technical review of our methods, where we saw success, and where we had short-comings over the next week but can say that overall I think the project was a success, and that we will be continuing to develop protocols and experimental frameworks to show the essentials of biotech to lay-people, and allow scientists with limited resources to perform useful work within the area of genetics.

I also received my OpenPCR kit this friday, the same day I finished my first experiment above. Once I got it alone in my lab/bedroom that night, I locked the doors, turned on every light I had (all the better to see you, my pretty :P), and spent about four and a half hours assembling the machine: peeling backing off of insulation, obsessively lining up heating elements, screwing many screws and being very careful of a certain temperature probe wire which I was told was so fragile that breathing on it would break it and ruin the lives of my family for generations to come (:P).

But, with surprisingly little crying or grunting I got the machine together and started running it through it's paces. I very quickly was flabbergasted as this machine I put together (convinced the entire time that it was never going to turn on, or would crack the heating elements the first time I turned it on) started up like a well oiled machine, and proceeded to perform BETTER than its technical specifications. I found that it could achieve a low temperature of 0.3 degrees celsius in an ambient temperature of 24 degrees. It heated up at a rate of 1 degree celsius, but only at the high and low point of its temperature range - it performed better than 1C/second in the mid range of its temperature, where both the annealing and extending temperatures are found. So, shocked, I set the machine on my lab table (improvised) and went to bed to go to work in the morning.

Now I sit here on Sunday afternoon relating all of this to you, in a sort of awe of how far I've come in the last several months, and looking ahead at what I plan to do in the next six months and, further on, in the coming years. It reminds me of that moment of a rollercoaster when the interminable clacking from being pulled up the first hill stops, but before the rollers start rushing from the downward slide into the rest of the coaster. That is this moment I think, and I can confidently give you the advice that when you find yourself in this moment, take a second to check your calculations - and then lift your arms up and prepare for the ride of a lifetime.

I'm being lazy today, resting, so I'm not going to post any real science content, but wanted to describe this feeling of having gotten over the first hill and looking out over the others that will be mounted by sheer inertia. I'll fully write up my first school experiment over the next week, and will provide at least a sketch of a plan for my work over the next six months, but for now I am going to track down a glass of raspberry tea, go sit on my porch, and enjoy the unseasonably warm weather for a moment. :)