Ecogeoman and I have noticed that if your field is small, you sometimes have to get creative to solve practical problems in the lab. Without tons of people out there doing the same kinds of work, there might not be enough demand to warrant design and marketing of specialized equipment for your purpose. So the thing you need might not exist, or if it does you might not know about it.
Fortunately, we can usually come up with something that will do the job. We're constantly repurposing stuff to find solutions to little problems. Cutting up PCR tubes, getting creative with toothpaste, spending hours in craft or hardware stores describing what we want without getting into all the bizarre details of the experiment. My new lab is getting a taste of this now, and I think they find it pretty frustrating.
I suspect you don't run into these problems so much if you do NIH-funded stuff (not because of the funding, but because there are so many people doing similar types of work). Whole companies exist to supply the needs of bioscience researchers -- and they have competition! I'm getting a taste of this in my new lab now, and I think find it pretty delightful. Sure, there are companies selling stuff specifically for workers in my old field, too, but there just aren't as many and their offerings are more limited.
I did have an experience recently where I tried to MacGyver a lab set-up, and then found a supplier for everything I needed, deigned exactly for my purpose. It was glorious!
Do my readers who work on cancer and stuff face similar challenges? Or is my assessment way off-base?
9 comments:
ha! i feel you.
i work in a dept that is split btwn field biologists like me, and cell-molecular people. one of the cell people once asked me where i order my supplies/equipment bc he was having a hard time with the customer service at his usual place. I had to laugh and tell him my 'vendor' wouldn't be much help to him-- I get all of my stuff from Home Depot and Forestry Suppliers!
At least we have Forestry Suppliers! And Ben Meadows! Although, even those failed me this past field season and I had to get creative in the field, too.
The problems usually really start once I have the samples back in the lab. Everything is designed for stupid proteins and DNA, I swear!
ahh...those days when I needed something and had to get creative ;) I found that I needed it some in my post doc too - even if it was a well funded place, some experimental set ups were just too "odd". Nothing to do with toothpaste though. What did you use that for?!!? *curious*
I can see the cutting PCRtubes, or as we did - making some kind of slow-dripping column in a closed tube in the cold room with extra padding since it needed to be at an odd temperature... ;)
My boss is the MacGyver of all bosses, and our lab is filled with stuff we (read: he) put together. I love being in a lab like that. He enjoys it, I like it too, and it often saves a ton of money. We do work in an area where most everything can be bought, but it just so much more fun this way.
I never had to put anything together from scratch, but my PhD supervisor loved to play with stuff like that, developing brand new techniques and equipment.
I once dropped and broke two perspex gel electrophoresis plates within a month, and the replacements were ridiculously expensive to buy. So I brought a surviving plate home, and Mr E Man made a couple of copies at work for me. They were a wee bit rough and ready, but did the job perfectly for checking plasmid inserts and other stuff that wasn't going to become a nice polished figure in a paper. He got an acknowledgment in my next paper out of the deal - "for assistance with laboratory equipment"! I don't know how many people there are in the world who have their names both in published papers and in movie credits, but it can't be many! (Hubby suggested that Michael Crichton probably managed both!)
Someone in my lab made a plasma slide cleaner out of an old microwave. I've fixed a lot of things with a little wire and a soldering iron... and cut up a lot of PCR tubes. But yes, in general, you can buy it for biology! Heck, you can even buy a custom plasmid.
Ha! I don't even know what most of you are talking about. ;)
There was a time when I would have enjoyed finding work-arounds, but now I kinda feel like people are suspicious when I say there isn't stuff available for what I need to do. Plus, I've wasted a lot of time trying to find solutions (why do product description in online catalogs have to suck so bad?). At this point I'd rather just be able to buy what I need.
My boss has repurposed cooking gear, baby carriages, vacuum cleaners, a bunch of other odd stuff I forget, and most recently, googly eyes.
The accounting department thinks we do it just to mess with them.
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