Yesterday and today were all about biochemistry: separating and isolating proteins. Our instructors have been really impressed by the quality of our protein gels so far…beginner’s luck, I say. I held my breath when loading the tiny quantities of liquid into these tiny wells in these gels. Check out my first DNA gel:

I got a taste for BLAST searches today and learned a bit about what ‘bioinformatics’ is about. Pretty powerful stuff. The college courses I took in biology were in the mid-1990s—pre-human genome project—so this revolution in using software to mine genomes and proteomes has until today remained largely a mystery to me. It was only a small taste, but at least I gained a bit of appreciation for the field.

We also got to hang out with the resident electron microscope expert here at MBL. A really calm, relaxed guy…I’m told that that’s a common trait among electron microscopists…part scientists, part artists. It was amazing to be able to zoom in 1,000 times, 10,000 times with just a click of a turning knob and see individual cell components, even molecules. And definitely a reality check for us when we found out how much time and effort goes into preparing cell samples for EM. Indeed, it is as much an art as it is science.