Dynamic Equilibrium

Sunday
On Sunday afternoon I jetted off to... Durham. Well, drove. Well, was driven.
Anyway, we each got our own room in the college and felt suitably grown up and student-y, and began the icebreaker activity: the "World Trade Game", resulting in me calling everyone by the country they were assigned to.

Monday
On Monday we began the lab work. Jenna and I turned out to be the only biologists on the trip, although there are a few biochemists. It turns out that most teams (two people per team) are being sponsored by various companies to solve some sort of problem with chemical investigations, with the exceptions of Jenna and I; and Hayley and Chris. We're being sponsored by the university itself and are being guided by university staff members.
The main idea of Jenna's and my project is to crystallize various proteins and then use X-ray diffraction to find the structure of the protein. We started with the basics: calibrating the pH meter- perhaps tedious to some but we rather enjoyed it. Everything is pretty much a brand new experience for us. We then prepared a buffer with pH 4.8, using sodium acetate, and a reservoir solution using ethylene glycol (me: "Sir, what's the structure of this? What does ethylene even look like? It must have a double bond... and what does glycol look like?") and some of the buffer we had just made up. 
After making up these solutions, we finally got our hands on some protein- except we didn't get our hands on them, we were wearing nitrile gloves and avoiding contact. Everything seems to have some sort of hazard these days. We weighed out an annoyingly tiny amount of lysozyme (to 4d.p.!) and made up a solution of it, using the buffer.
Then came the fun part- we got to use micro pipettes, an old favourite of mine. We had trays with wells in them, and had to pipette 10ml of our reservoir solution into each well. We then had 18mm diameter siliconized cover slips and had to pipette drops of lysozyme and reservoir solution onto the cover slips, varying the ratio of protein the reservoir solution to see which proportion would produce the best crystals. The cover slips had to be carefully turned over with tweezers and fixed into place over the wells, as we were using the Hanging Drop method of crystallization. This was all rather exciting at first, but there was only one micro pipette the right size for the tiny volumes we were dealing with, and we were pipetting a tray each, all at once, so it did take quite a time and I must say I was relieved when we ran out of 18mm coverslips and couldn't continue to fill a second tray each.

The food here is pretty good and by the time we left the lab and walked back to the college, I think we were all in need of a decent meal. After we'd eaten I chatted to a couple of people from different schools and then we had to sit for an hour and listen to some engineer for Corus- not particularly fascinating for a would-be geneticist, but then it couldhave been worse.
Once we escaped from that, we all flocked outside and played British Bulldog and talked, but then noticed an open door leading the the basement, and the pool table it contained. Most of us were up 'til elevenish and we played Twister too (which I won!). Once people started driftin up to bed, Chris and I got into our pyjamas and went to Hayley's room to chat, where we ended up sleeping because we couldn't be bothered to return to our respective rooms. Chis took the floor and the duvet but it turns out that Hayley ended up on the floor too, thanks to me kicking her out of the bed in the middle of the night- sorry Hayley!

Tuesday
After hurrying back to my floor to shower and dress, and a rather unhealthy breakfast (I couldn't resist the rare opportunity of Coco Pops) , it was back to the lab for us, and our lysozyme had crystalized. We took them downstairs to one of the research labs where our assigned professor, Steffi, works. We examined the crystals under the microscope (they were pretty snazzy looking, I can assure you, although the pretty colours we saw were only due to the polarisation in the microscope). We then prepared some trays of insulin for crystallisation.
That night we went bowling (always good fun) and got soaked walking back up to the college, as the skies chose that moment to open. Most of us settled in one of the stairwells and chatted for hours, punctuated only when some of us ordered pizza (garlic bread for me, yum!).

Wednesday
We had a look at our insulin crystals (terrible results! Terrible! Not helped by the fact that I had used the wrong sized micropipette the day before, meaning we couldn't do a second tray, and that Jenna had tipped up our already pathetic crystals, thereby destroying them) and then out came the lysozyme crystals again. We isolated a crystal using a TINY wire loop and Steffi placed it in the X-ray diffraction machine. The room where this machine is kept was FREEZING because the crystal has to be kept cool, and to do this there are huge tanks (if that's the right word to use) of liquid nitrogen. We then saw the visual results of the X-rayed crystal.
The scheduled activity for that night was a "pub quiz", minus the pub. Not much to say about that, but it was a good laugh, as quizzes generally are (in my limited experience).

Thursday
Thursday dawned with the saddening knowledge that it was to be our last full day. Jenna and I had finished our lab work, so we looked at our insulin crystals under the microscope, or at least tried to. Most of the wells had precipitated and a lot of them were destroyed (see above). It turned out that there were actually some miniscule crystals, but they weren't exciting ones like the lysozyme ones had been.
After many hours of primping (by some girls, not I. I went upstairs to shower and throw on my dress half an hour beforehand), it was time for the NESIP formal dinner. Nom Nom Nomz.

Chris had a slight wardrobe panic when it turned out he'd not brought his smart trousers, and had to wear jeans instead, but we all managed to get there fully clothed. First, there was Pimm's (To cries of "Pimm's O' Clock" [me] and "Pimm's! It's Pimm's! I love Pimm's" [Emma W]), and we were expected to mill around and mingle for forty minutes or so. Winnie played the grand piano in the corner of the room (but was later scolded for doing so- apparently it wasn't for playing, it was for looking at) and we all chatted.

Despite having had to sign a behavioural contract promising the organisers that we wouldn't consume alcohol, we were offered a choice of either red or white wine. The evening's menu was as follows:

Afterwards, the night was ours. We went everywhere and talked about everything. It was brilliant. A few people voiced the idea of staying up all night (I wasn't one of them), but in the end, only three of us did. Boy, was I exhausted next morning!

-to be continued-