Tag: laboratory

Would you like to visit one of my lab?

It will be possible on this Saturday March 17th, 2007! For the EDAB Brain Awareness Week, one of my lab is organizing some conferences and you’ll also have the opportunity to visit the lab and see demonstrations on experiments we do and how we do. One of my mentors, Dr. P. Leprince, will tell (and show) you how we can identify proteins and identify their roles. Other workshops include microscopy, electrophysiology, behaviour. Conference topics include stem cells, drug addiction, injuries in the brain. You can have more info on the lab website (look for our activities, in French).

Unfortunately, I may not be there since I could have some experiment to do in the other lab, at the same time.

Receiving broken vials …

Antibodies vials inside the broken cool-packI was eager to receive some new antibodies for western blotting (I was waiting for them since December 2006!). They finally arrived on Wednesday but everything was broken inside! 😦 A plastic shell was supposed to protect the precious vials (about 300US$ each) but even that was broken. I immediately phoned the company and they promised me new vials for next Wednesday. Suddenly, it’s possible to get them in one week … Well, let’s see what I’ll get on that day …

A day in front of DeCyder

The whole day, I was busy working with DeCyder, a software to analyse spots of proteins in 2D gels. I hope I won’t dream of small red/yellow/green dots tonight:

DeCyder screenshot

The software use a 3D representation of the spot. If we change this view too fast (either by moving it or by quickly browsing through spots), the graphic diplay freezes and we fall back to an ugly VGA mode (screenshot below). Since the morning, the computer crashed 7 times! I reduced the screen resolution to 1024x768pixels in 24bits colours and it seems to work correctly now. 🙂

Error when moving DeCyder 3D representation too fast