How I Learned the Fine Art of Collaboration

Collaboration “to work together, especially in a joint intellectual effort.” So says Mr. Webster. In practice, however, we all know that collaboration involves the art of getting credit for someone s work, an intellectual effort that can leap continents and disciplines in a single bound. I didn’t realize that during my first attempt at collaboration. Several years ago I spent some time using the Dodge procedure to produce ghosts from pig red blood cells. This entails lysing

Written byJeffrey Moran

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I didn’t realize that during my first attempt at collaboration. Several years ago I spent some time using the Dodge procedure to produce ghosts from pig red blood cells. This entails lysing the blood cells in a dilute solution and separating the ruptured plasma membranes from the cell contents, particularly the red hemoglobin, by repeated washings and centrifugations until they are as white as ghosts.

I then shipped these ghosts to Buffalo, N.Y, where researchers used them in experiments on glucose transport mechanisms. Since the Dodge procedure is a well established and published method that is used in numerous labs throughout the world (and since if you can read, you should be able to cook), the only reason I could conjure up for manufacturing pig blood cell ghosts in Missouri and shipping them to Buffalo is that there must be no pigs in New York.

Now, this will no doubt ...

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