Mutant Fail

This song pretty much sums up the discovery I made on Friday.

Basically the Drosophila mutant I have (and have been performing various experiments with) is still being expressed, Which isn't great news when you've been assuming it is a null mutant (a mutation with no expression of functional protein).
The mutant is missing the first two exons and has lost it's original start (ATG) site but annoyingly it has chosen to pick up an alternate start site. This gets more tricky as there are two that are close together

ATGCCATGGGC...

If it has picked the first one then I should still be ok as it is out of frame has 8 nonsense amino acids and then hits a STOP codon. The problem is that the second one is in frame and would happily make the remainder of the protein that contains at least one domain that is vital to its function.
The unfortunate thing is that I have no way of telling which start site is being used without an antibody (which I don't have). If anyone knows of a way to do so - I'm all ears. The best I can come up with is to clone the mutant cDNA into a GFP vector and see what is expressed. Not a great experiment as the only thing it can confirm is whether a truncated protein is being produced,

Ultimately I need to make a genuine null mutant which is what my priority has to be. Somewhat worrying with 11 months left on my contract but I may as well get on with it.

In an attempt to see a positive in this revelation - it may at least explain the lack of a phenotype in the mutant I have been using. Maybe the real deal will have a phenotype that rewards the mutant making!

Egg on my face

In the lab today I asked whether there were any really old culture plates in the incubator as this often happens when one of the lab is away for a while.
One of my colleagues replied "No, but there's a bacterial plate with your name on it that looks over a week old in the other incubator".

Serves me right.

Pint of Science - International

I mentioned a while ago that I'm involved in the Pint of Scientist festival this year. Handling the "Life sciences" section in Bristol (book your tickets now).
I know I have readers from other parts of the world and the website now has sections for USA, France, Australia and Switzerland. So if you live in any of those countries have a click and see what may be on in your area.

I'll try and do some more shameless promotion for the talks I'm involved in although I should probably concentrate on making sure they run smoothly first!

Name the Biologist

It's been a little while but here's a new "name the biologist". It's still techniques oriented, until it turns into something else, so the list of candidates should be shrinking

As for the last instalment that was none other than Paul Erhlich another Nobel Prize winner who among many other contributions popularised the "magic bullet" theory in which the magic bullet was a compound carrying a toxin that would selectively target and kill a disease-causing organism. This is partly seen in monoclonal antibodies. Erhlich also developed staining techniques for identifying different blood cell types leading to the characterisation of several blood diseases. He was also a pioneer in chemotherapy. A pretty spectacular career.

Rick and Morty - Inspirational Science Motivation Speech

Rick and Morty is an excellent new animated sci-fi comedy from the creator of "community". Think of it as this generations' "futurama" but possible even darker. Anyway the show is littered with funny quotes but I quite like this one as a reason for studying science.

Also wise words for any scientists suffering in a relationship :)

Break the cycle, rise up and focus on science!

Colour Co-Ordinated

Only realised half-way through the day that the purple in my black and purple striped shirt matches my gloves and tube rack. I don't even like purple that much so it's a weird co-incidence.
That said it shouldn't be noticeable as I "always" have a lab coat on when wearing gloves.


In other news - don't flame coverslips in 70% ethanol and accept that cloning never wants to work when you think it should be a slam dunk done-in-one. At this rate it's not going to be a done-in-a-dozen.

Name the Biologist

This guy was responsible for quite a few interesting discoveries and concepts. It's hard to dodge his influence.

With regards to the last installment they were