Fast & Furious

The last two months zoomed by, fast and furious, as I shuffled between OC and MBU, carrying out experiments from milligrams in one lab to micrograms scale in the other.

Experiments after experiments, workups after workups, columns after columns. The cycle gets repeated every other day in OC: set up new experiment, quench and workup, purification, isolation and characterization of product.

Unsuccessful reactions and repeated attempts. Exploration of other synthetic pathways, alternative approaches and strategies. Three different projects running at the same time. When one gets held up, we shift gear immediately and work on the other ones.

Other than what I learnt in science classes during my primary school education, I come from an almost zero biology background. My one and only formal course in biology was BP101 on fundamental plant biology in the university, which I scored a ‘C’ grade.

Once again, I had to start from ground zero in MBU. Instead of round bottomed flasks, experiments were done in micro centrifuge tubes. Instead of glass syringes and stainless steel needles, micro pipettes and micro tips of different size ranges were used. Where we always take extra care and precaution to keep moisture out of the experiment environment, aqueous solutions are used predominantly as the reaction medium here.

A little more confusing were the calculations which were done in terms of concentration instead of stoichiometric equivalents. Then there are the different reagents, buffers and stock solutions to prepare, dilutions and more dilutions. Mass spectrometry, UV absorption tests, HPLC and gel electrophoresis are but just some of the many techniques that were used for monitoring reaction progress which I had to master quickly.

Gel electrophoresis is something totally new to me. It took me one whole day to cast the gel for my first gel electrophoresis experiment. Now I do it in about 1.5 hours. The first few gels broke into a few pieces when I tried to take them off the casting plates. Now I can make them slide easily into the container where staining and de-staining of the gel will be carried out next.

Re-training for the various instruments had to be done as the systems and software were different from what I had used before. New methods had to be developed for the HPLC analyses. Absorption wavelengths had to be determined for the compounds synthesized. Coupling studies to be carried out.

There is still more to be done.