Other peoples' lab skills, or lack thereof

Sometimes I hate the fact that some of the experiments I do require other peoples’ help. Not because I don’t like working with other people, but because I don’t like relying on other peoples’ lab skills, or lack thereof. I am not saying that mine are perfect, but I do have some good lab skills thanks to extensive experience working in a few different labs before becoming a graduate student. If my advisor were to pick one student out of the lab to try a new protocol, it would be me. I know how to do a lot of stuff, and I know how to do it well.

Recently I pulled out some frozen homogenized tissue samples to thaw, or what I thought were homogenized samples. It turns out they weren’t as homogenized as they should be, as in there are LARGE, clearly visible chunks of tissue that I wouldn’t have missed had I been the one doing the homogenizing. The strange thing is that all the samples that have this problem were processed on the same day, but I can’t figure out who has crappy homogenizing skills. Even if I did know who the culprit was, it wouldn’t make any difference…pointing out the fact that they have potentially screwed up several samples isn’t going to make the samples any better, nor is it going to make the person feel good. The only potential good I can see from pointing this out is that, in the future, the person might pay closer attention to make sure the whole tissue is homogenized, and that may not even matter because I have no way of knowing if the person is ever going to homogenize tissue ever again.

I do realize that at some point in one’s career, you have to take some necessary risks to get some things done. I consider one of these risks to be allowing others to help you do lab work. In order for this to happen without bad things occurring (i.e. ending up with crappy samples), these people need to be properly trained. Sometimes the training takes a long time. Sometimes it takes 5 minutes. Homogenizing tissue with a tissue tearor (basically a dremel tool with a fancy attachment) is one of the 5 minute lessons. It isn’t hard. Really, a five year old could do it. All it takes is some manual dexterity and good eyesight. And your eyesight doesn’t have to be THAT good to do it. Hence, my frustration at having unhomogenized tissue samples.

One also realizes at some point in their science career that the more samples you have, the better, and in my case (and especially lucky for the non-homogenizer), I have samples that can replace these that have been properly homogenized. Murphy’s Law strikes again.