Planning is everything

The next two months I'll be doing as many experiments as possible. I have no courses until April, so I'm hoping to produce results for my cell cycle studies of A. thaliana. Hopefully I'll finish both the flow cytometry and qPCR analysis before April.

My biggest problem in working with plants is that I have to sow the seeds two weeks before I use them. At this stage, I don't know what treatments I should give the plants two weeks in advance and I don't know how many plants I'll need. Therefore I prepare 300 seeds for each experiment and prepare to have 3 experiments each week. That's only for the flow cytometry. I haven't gotten any results yet, so I don't know how long I should keep this up before I begin preparing plants for the qPCR.

To help me plan all the experiments, sowing, moving of the plants to the growth room, making of plates and stock solutions, I downloaded labguru. It's a tool to help you plan and track your experiments and although I've only been taking a quick look at it, it seems good so far. I hope this can help me plan all the stuff going on so that I can get rid of the feeling that I'm always forgetting something. Unless I'm actually forgetting something... did I move those plants yet?

Defend-your-thesis-brownie

A girl on my EiT group just defended her thesis: Physical activity and cardiorespiratory fitness throughout life.

To celebrate I made a brownie. Unfortunately it was so small that I only could fit half the title of her thesis on the cake:

In other words, the cake says: Physical activity and cardiorespiratory F
...it tasted good though! (as defending your thesis should do, I guess)

Remembering your plants

Vernalization is a process where seeds are kept cold and dark to promote and synchronize germination. I usually allow my plants to vernalize for 2-4 days, whatever is best so that I can go hiking or skiing in the weekends.
- I don't mind working in the weekends, but I do mind going to university on a Saturday only to move my plants.

Yesterday, for the first time in my history as an Arabidopsis-grower, I forgot to move my plants to the growth room. After working with my EiT group all day at the hospital, I went back to university to say hi to a friend and then I went home - to finish my last part on the salmon report for EiT. I worked until 9 pm and never thought about the plants until the next morning.

I got that kind of "panicky" feeling that comes when you think you've messed up in the lab (if you're an MSc) and sent a "oh no, the world is going under"-text to my supervisor (at 7.50 am).

He replied: that's probably ok

...So, now I'm going over to move those plants before I meet the EiT group and try to think before I panic in the future.

BUG!

My fellow biology students founded the organization Biologists Without Borders (Biologer Uten Grenser - BUG) in 2010. BUG is a non-profit organization that aims to promote discussion of problems, solutions and all kinds of topics related to biology, across the borders of countries and universities.

In November 2011 BUG hosted a seminar on food security: Problems of today, the biological solutions of tomorrow
The next seminar will be in March and the topic is antibiotic resistance. But more on that later!

Last week I got the job as web developer in BUG, so I've been spending all day trying to make a website. I've just published it, but it's NOT finished - just to make that clear!
Anyway I'm very proud - even though the site is based on a template...

Check it out here: BUG

Oh, and the only language so far is Norwegain - sorry about that!

Experts in Teamwork, salmon, sustainability and MissionRio

I'm in the middle of a 3-week intensive course that's mandatory for all master students at NTNU (Norwegian University of Science and Technology). The course is Experts in Teamwork. It's the only course NTNU really brags about - a lot.

It works like this: groups of students from all disciplines and areas come together, get a topic and make product. Then they also have to talk about how the group functioned - hopefully an argument or two - and then write a "group report". In other words we're supposed to learn to work together!

We're beginning the last of the 3 weeks on Monday. My group consists of two medical students, two in government studies and one economic student. I'm the only biologist and our subject is:
Marine biological resources management!

We decided to write a report that discuss how salmon farming can overcome it's current problems, that is 

- using wild fish as food, leading to overfishing

- diseases

- escape of farmed salmon that breeds with wild salmon or transmit lice 

We also wan't to see if any improvements on efficiency and sustainability can be transferred to other species in other countries - relating the whole thing to the world's food issues. Our work is coupled to MissionRio, a contest arranged by Technoport and NTNU in relation to the Rio+20 conference this summer. About 20 groups get to present their product to politicians, scientists and journalists at a conference in Trondheim this April. And there's a prize for the best product, apparently :)

The process of discovering problems with salmon farming has been very interesting. For example, less than 10% of the farmed salmons are lost annually, however these percents conceal the actual number: 36 million salmons die each year due to diseases.

This number is shockingly high and is mainly caused by viral diseases.

It is evident that more efficient vaccines are needed to stop the viruses from spreading. In addition good routines on how to the salmon is kept, handled and moved can reduce stress, which is known to be immunosuppressive in salmon. However, it is likely the use of strict routines on reporting of outbreaks, quarantine, disinfection of equipment and well boats and screening smolts for infection that has the greatest potential in working against more than one virus.

References:

Can we get the upper hand on viral diseases in Aquaculture of Atlantic salmon

Sowing seeds

After working half a year I finally got my protocol to work, so my experiments are beginning next week. That means I've been sowing seeds these last days.

I sow the seeds on MS agar using a pipette and place one seed at a time (hopefully) on the agar. Usually I have 30 seeds on each plate, so for the 12 plates I did tonight, that's 360 seeds. I never imagined I'd spend so much time sowing hundreds of seeds every week!

Luckily it's with sowing on agar as with a lot of lab-stuff: eventually you get the hang of it and can do it MUCH faster. And you stop poking holes in the agar (or you do it a lot less) but even better, the plates stops becoming contaminated. The first time I did this my plates ended up being covered in mold. Feel kind of sorry for the poor little Arabidopsis seedlings that has gone all white!

Also, notice the random placement of the seedlings- and they grow on top of each other :)

Turns out even sowing seeds have to be re-learnt when you're doing it in the lab!