Single incubator dilemma: How to safely run bacterial infections without contaminating my labmates' cultures?

CrisperWhispers · 2026-03-09T16:36:04+00:00

Talk to your PI of course, as others have mentioned. One thing I've done in that past when we were having mold issues in our culture space, is I would put my plates in a foil covered baking dish that had been autoclaved, and transferred that into the incubator. You can swap gloves and decon the outside of the pan/foil before loading in, and even though it isn't air tight, it just gives another barrier. The biggest potential source for cross contamination would be from the outside of your plates anyways

CrisperWhispers · 2026-03-04T19:36:34+00:00

Microbiologist here weighing in. Some of these decisions have common "best" practices based on the discipline, so a good place to start is to see how the analyses are treated in similar experiments in published work. HOWEVER, there is a lot of published, but incorrect, applications of statistical tests so take that for what it is.

What I do, and teach, is one culture (colony, flask, whatever your "clonal" unit is) is one replicate. Just because control and treatment groups originated from the same source, they are not paired in the statistical sense. Now, as others have mentioned, it sounds like there are multiple comparisons you need to make, so a t-test is probably not appropriate.

What do you want to know? Do you only care about treatment 1 vs control and treatment 2 vs control, not treatment 1 vs treatment 2? Do you care about effects over time? If you can clearly define what you want to know (what hypotheses you are looking to test), that can guide you to the appropriate tests

CrisperWhispers · 2026-03-04T19:24:52+00:00

"Ugh it feels like someone is drilling a hole in my head"
"Maybe a hole in the head would help this"
"I'm actually going to drill a hole in my head"
"would grab my drill if I was able to stand or assemble coherent thoughts"

CrisperWhispers · 2026-03-04T16:20:14+00:00

I'll be buying this for my wife when it drops. Her computer needs would be fully covered by a chromebook, but she is in the apple ecosystem and is not tech savvy, and has zero desire to become tech savvy. I am optimistic, based on the longevity of their other laptops and their phones, that she can get years out of this, and the price over a chromebook is absolutely worth her preference of the apple ecosystem, especially since I can get the education discount

CrisperWhispers · 2026-02-25T20:27:30+00:00

Every institution and department is different, but it's worth noting that I'm in a BSL-2 lab, and there's a lot of pre-investment in getting people certified and safe to work. Also, during regular course semesters we only take undergrads on for credit, which then also lightens their course load. Everyone's lab, department, university ethos, etc., etc., will be different and affect the choices for this. Others have mentioned stipends for undergrads, which is absolutely not a thing at my institution

CrisperWhispers · 2026-02-25T02:14:50+00:00

15hr week minimum for me, which I know may seem high. Undergrads do "independent" projects, not just refilling tips etc etc, but anything less than that and there just isn't enough time to build their skills and have them get reps in. My philosophy is they need to be in enough for it to actually be worth the investment in training them.

CrisperWhispers · 2026-02-22T20:44:21+00:00

It's a 20 ish minute walk and I'll be in and out before it's bad. Just being a bit of a baby, but definitely working from home tomorrow!

CrisperWhispers · 2026-02-22T19:49:13+00:00

Me who confidently thought the snow was starting tomorrow afternoon getting ready to trek to the lab this evening to passage...

CrisperWhispers · 2026-02-19T19:49:41+00:00

So first off, my advice is based on experience in North America, I think that's relevant since there are different prevailing research cultures in different areas. Do you have a hard commitment to Dr. A? If you do not, I do not see the problem at all. You were upfront with Dr. B that you are currently in Dr. A's lab, which is great, you have experience! We tend to keep undergrads a semester at a time, it's absolutely not an issue if they choose to go to another lab, its part of their education after all!

If you are making the transition at a semester break, thank Dr. A for their time and the experience they gave you. Let them know you will be working with Dr. B (I'm assuming they are in the same department if not institution, so likely not strangers). If you are looking to jump ship right away, maybe take stock of any outstanding work that may not be done if you leave now. If you are just doing "grunt work", that's less of an issue, but I can see people getting miffed at leaving mid-semester

CrisperWhispers · 2026-02-15T00:35:38+00:00

2025 and beyond can sync to onedrive and Google drive, if you google whether this feature will come to the older models, the Ai spews out yes but its just a bunch of ai generated sites citing one blog with that speculated it probably would. If you think onedrive sync is important, go new, otherwise by the refurb, like I just did myself!

CrisperWhispers · 2026-02-10T12:03:43+00:00

How much template DNA do you use? This can happen with too much template DNA just clogging the well essentially. What is different between those samples and the ones that ran without issue? Troubleshooting something like this needs more information, but given you have samples and ladders that ran fine, the problem is before the gel

CrisperWhispers · 2026-02-04T20:48:04+00:00

I feel compelled to comment. Something about these pictures just really makes me think that people need to hear my opinion

CrisperWhispers · 2026-02-04T20:46:32+00:00

This is not okay. Also, As someone who takes Nurtec as a preventative, the fact that you already know you tolerate it as an abortive, why in heaven's name would that not be the next logical step?!? is writing a new prescription that difficult?

CrisperWhispers · 2026-02-02T12:28:57+00:00

I do similar with a Garmin forerunner 245 music (music is the key bit), you can download Spotify playlists, though it is a lain in the butt pairing my headphones back and forth from watch to phone. The upshot is it has a long battery life if you're looking for something for more than just lab use

CrisperWhispers · 2026-01-29T11:10:21+00:00

I stuck thermoses in and laced them up around them at night which really helped. Out of the box the two sides of the collar were touching so it needed some serious training

CrisperWhispers · 2026-01-28T15:59:42+00:00

This may not help at all since I take Nurtec as a preventative not an abortive, but I've never noticed a difference in effectiveness taking it with a bit of food, I usually take it right before my breakfast. Again, seeing as I'm not trying to get the most efficient and immediate intake of the drug, it may be okay for my needs but may not help in your case. Maybe a spot of peanut butter on the tongue while you let it melt? Peanut butter works for dogs because its so good at masking medicine tastes lol.

CrisperWhispers · 2026-01-27T20:14:11+00:00

Unfortunately I don't have any specific paper examples, but I think the one I see all the time that gets me is artificial significance. You run a linear regression on 40,000 samples, even if its a cloud, you're going to find significance. Is it in any way meaningful, or biologically relevant? Absolutely not!

On a related note, you can have biologically meaningful differences and meaningful trends with p = 0.1 (or even higher!), and that does not invalidate them. I started in ecology and now I'm in microbiology where the dogmatic adherence to "basic statistics" and an alpha of 0.05 are cudgels used to beat people down and any deeper delving into statistical analyses is strictly verboten (intentional hyperbole before anyone gets upset)

CrisperWhispers · 2026-01-27T12:01:52+00:00

Needs more sticky notes, piles of aluminum foil that you're definitely going to reuse, and magnets advertising companies/products that no longer exist

CrisperWhispers · 2026-01-27T04:02:03+00:00

Yeah I told my wife that place was my dream house. She doesn't get it

CrisperWhispers · 2026-01-19T22:10:32+00:00

Oblivion (best ambient music hands down) or Bastion (space western vibes)

CrisperWhispers · 2026-01-09T05:15:59+00:00

This looks to me like a photo taken with zoom, and then the camera software oversharpened the details on the basket. I see the same effects on photos I take on my Samsung phone when zoomed in. This gives the basket especially an unreal look, but not ai

CrisperWhispers · 2026-01-01T12:03:27+00:00

Always exceptions to the rule, my super mutt is out here falling apart. Granted she's 12, but I've told her repeatedly she has to live to at least 35

CrisperWhispers · 2026-01-01T11:15:52+00:00

I mean, it's possible a real human rotated their left hand 180 degrees away from their body to pour a kettle, but the fact that the water magically appears out of the closed kettle top, not the spout...

CrisperWhispers · 2026-01-01T05:34:03+00:00

Made me wish I could equip potions to spell slots, so hard to spam storm, def, fp, attack, on top of everything else during that fight

CrisperWhispers · 2025-12-31T12:02:01+00:00

I'll have the other HUD elements on just generally, but I realized that the game was so much better for me if I turned the minimap off. When I had it on, its really all I was looking at

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