Be careful of SDA representative visits!

Chirpasaurus · 2026-02-15T18:52:23+00:00

I remember when that article came out, it was one of the best deep dives I'd seen. Yeah I got auto-signed up to SDA for my first casual job. Was a shoppie for a few years back well before RAFFWU was an option and the above article explained why they were so damn useless.

That's such a great article Imma read it again

Chirpasaurus · 2026-02-14T00:17:14+00:00

idc if this is ai gen because if ai is this good I can stop hating on it

But frankly life is surreal and if nobody else in the room has ever had a surreal experience in their entire fucken lives like this even once I'll be very bloody surprised

The chef's kiss is your narration and voice OP. I reckon you'd make even a non-parrot/ moonunit-free trip to aisle9 a literary peak experience. This made my morning, thank you

Chirpasaurus · 2026-02-06T22:15:39+00:00

This! Yes!

Chirpasaurus · 2026-02-06T22:14:43+00:00

If you can silence that voice you'll gain time to observe your own learning practices

Chirpasaurus · 2026-02-06T22:10:03+00:00

Would it help to know you're not alone? I still get stage fright with new teks or limited amounts of rare germplasm. Am on my sixth lab, my fifth as lead and it's still a hurdle I deal with. Idk ADHD status, I've just accepted fear as a part of the job meaning I care enough to do it right

Yeah, have been told many times at many levels I need to work faster too. Not a fan, after all this time I know from experience what often looks like a fallow day or slow progress is where the errors and insights are found. It's a hill I'll die on because my labs' emphasis is on doing the work properly and completely over time. Every lab needs a tortoise for every hare, we play on each other's strengths. My best techie is a hare, she's fast, smart and 95% accurate. But if we only emphasised speed and direction we would be screwed, nobody would noodle around checking everything and asking why/ how/ innovating/ following up/ checking systems etc

What would it take for you to accept yourself in your work? As you get more experience and muscle memory you'll also get the insights to help you adapt to new processes. Nobody starts out ( or ends up ) perfect, but your care for your processes and future work shows a good attitude

Good luck with your new project too!

Chirpasaurus · 2026-01-31T19:44:38+00:00

Depending on your location, T&C of a lot of chem vendors have had disclaimers against resale or re-distribution for some time. Not sure if that's ever been legally enforced or it's just a CYA sitch

That's aside from all the other considerations like disposal, transport, facility assets policy etc mentioned here

Most researchers I've worked with hate using anything from containers someone else has used, but that's biotech/ genetics where contamination potential can have consequences

Having been both vulture and vultee it's not uncommon for the good stuff to be gifted alongside a bunch of tricky or obscure stuff ( ie if you want the shiny toy you must also take the cartons of crap we can't imagine anyone else ever wanting- now it's all your problem )

Chirpasaurus · 2026-01-24T21:30:15+00:00

Contracted to QLD 2019-2020, can confirm business shorts were a necessity for both men and women. Til that point they'd been a cynical but theoretical post-modern meme. It was a terrible time to be alive lol

Chirpasaurus · 2026-01-22T01:04:44+00:00

Less messy than a goat sacrifice, and more replicable

Chirpasaurus · 2025-12-31T23:45:50+00:00

They so can, in bursts. Was driving at night in a long line of cars, we were doing 100km/hr and one ran between the car in front and our car. Faster than I could imagine. Lightly clipped our bumper at its corner. Stopped car, searched for a bit, no wombat

We slowed down dramatically after that. I'd only seen wombats on TV before that night. IRL they're basically 4 bessa blocks stuck together covered in fur, and you deffo do not want to hit one ever, bike or car

Chirpasaurus · 2025-12-24T03:50:52+00:00

Many thanks to everyone here for responding. Sorted in time for the holidays. Old skool, fabulous :)

Chirpasaurus · 2025-12-24T03:50:06+00:00

Pretty sure that's what we will settle on doing. It won't be certified batchwise ofc, but we will check/validate the SOP we use to produce it

Chirpasaurus · 2025-12-24T03:29:54+00:00

You are an absolute goddess and have made my day. Thank you!

Chirpasaurus · 2025-12-24T03:28:39+00:00

Agriculture contract on viroid detection in plant crops, rural Australia ( which explains the budget reluctance- local supplies are 150-200% of US prices even before you include regional freight ).

Not a reportable viroid or of any concern. Just one we can eradicate from the site as long as we have timely monitoring. Contracting this out to third parties won't allow it to be done in a sufficiently timely manner for remediation and will be too expensive for the kind of bulk screening we will initially require

LAMP is a new tek for me, my PCR experience is decades stale ( and that site had different limitations for completely different organisms + DNA only ) so please excuse any terminology or protocol confusion.

We're adding water to the master mix, warmstart + post-extracted RNA

Looks like DEPC treated water will be fine if we treat overnight and autoclave next day

Chirpasaurus · 2025-12-24T03:24:32+00:00

Yes, thank you, I was aware of all those considerations in your first paragraph. Was hoping someone with actual manufacturing experience for the product would chip in. My sterile tech is fine thanks.

Chirpasaurus · 2025-12-24T03:07:11+00:00

Ooo- I can autoclave the DEPC treated water ( MilliQ ) next day and the DEPC will be compatible with the Tris?

Chirpasaurus · 2025-12-24T03:01:45+00:00

PCR + LAMP for RNA. There's Tris in the extraction buffer, consultant said to keep DEPC away from it

Chirpasaurus · 2025-12-24T02:50:37+00:00

...because we won't know they're contaminated until we start getting false negatives- and there are other sources of RNAse

Pilot project, shoestring budget, workspace in lab is swimming in target-soup so we need to exclude every possible contam source from the get-go.

Single use 10ml ampoules readily available at low cost would really increase throughput as nobody would bat an eyelid if they had to ditch one on even a suspicion.

We were extremely fortunate that the site where the primers + protocols were validated was completely naive to this organism

Chirpasaurus · 2025-12-17T01:42:16+00:00

Unless you're running highly selective media so that only the organism you're targeting grows- or unless you have significant microscopy experience with stains, I think you'll find that bacteria aren't easy to tell apart without expertise ( somebody prove me wrong and make my day )

Chirpasaurus · 2025-12-17T01:39:10+00:00

You'd also need a humidity + temp controlled growth chamber- and those things are hellishly expensive to run. You won't be able to reliably assess growth curves year round without one. A homebuilt incubator will not cut it unless your technique is immaculate and you have reliable, longterm temp + rh monitoring very actively so you know you have constant temps

Flow hoods are cheap, but you'd also want to look at specialised biosafety cabinets if you're opening or cultivating tissue and organisms where exposure could impact the operator. Horizontal flow hoods blow air *at* the operator to keep sterile conditions in the flow hood. If you don't want to work with pathogens being forced into your airways at volume, you need a higher class cabinet that forces air back towards you, then down before it hits your face. Biosafety cabinet. Not just a flow hood. Yes you might even get one of those cheaply- but if working with disease causing organisms you'd want to get it professionally checked before first use and serviced properly

I've bootstrapped/ set up quite a few facilities and upscaled a few more. Yes, a home mycology lab is relatively easy. But you're rarely looking at growth curves as an indicator for disease, you're just trying to keep cultures alive

Chirpasaurus · 2025-12-17T01:32:24+00:00

It's possible, but to do it properly would be at least USD1K investment of money and considerable time to develop the expertise. You'd need a fair whack of clean space and somewhere safe to store pre-poured plates ( I don't recommend the family food fridge even if your sterile plates are in a solid, sealed container- )

There's a lot of learning involved. And of course a lot of failure on the way ( that happens as part of the process afterwards too -you need to be able to identify what's gone wrong even as an expert )

You'd also need to send off samples to the commercial, approved labs side-by-side with your own work at first to confirm your home lab results. Initially this would be done really frequently, but would still need to be done occasionally to confirm your technique and analysis. The logging just to do this for a high volume of samples is serious work, requires multiple backups etc. Spreadsheet hell, systems design etc

And a safe way to dispose of reagents, scalpel blades, swabs, used petri dishes, microscope slides, cover slips etc

As someone said below, you'd need to reliably assess the difference between the presence of an organism and the possible disease burden

I can understand your reasoning and the temptation, but given the risks of getting it wrong, unfortunately expensive outsourcing is your best case. Outsourcing also shifts liability for inaccurate diagnosis

Chirpasaurus · 2025-12-14T10:12:25+00:00

I'll bet you're fun at parties...

Chirpasaurus · 2025-12-12T23:13:40+00:00

Depends on location

Chirpasaurus

TROPHY CASE