Monday, March 20, 2006
TRIUMPH! The North has been subjugated.
Northern blotting is the molecular biology equivalent of the Napoleonic invasion of Russia. The northern blot, like the Russian countryside, is forbidding, interminable, dangerous, and inherently prone to complete and utter failure by any would-be destroyers. I braved noxious chemicals, irradiation, RNA degradation, darkroom breakdowns, and faulty vacuum ovens, and I was like the French army frozen in the mud outside Vilna: exhausted, disheartened, and ready to turn around and slink back to Paris in shame. However, I'm Razzy, and there's nothing I can't do, so I perservered, and unlike that small-dicked, gimpy-handed Corsican, I ultimately prevailed! Look upon my conquest, and tremble:
Okay, okay, so it's not the sexiest blot in the long and storied history of nucleic acid hybridization and it's not going to get me a Nature paper or anything. My RNA isn't completely denatured and the bands are smeary, but my probe is detecting transgene transcripts! Bands in every lane right around 1.7 kb, exactly where they're supposed to be. And a pretty little band in the ICAM-LA4 positive control, and no band in the non-transgenic CBAxB6 negative control. HOT. I'll do it again and make it pretty for publication, but these crappy-looking bands signify that my mice aren't a lost cause, I may actually graduate at some point in the next couple years, and I did a FUCKING NORTHERN! Victory is mine!
And yes, I know that nobody gives a shit about this besides me, but I don't care. It's my website, and this is a major fucking achievement in my career as a graduate student. I am the god of outdated and archaic molecular biology techniques. Kiss my blot, haters. I rule.
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