Rituals and Deities in the Lab

As a young postdoc, I accidentally stumbled upon the secret to getting my protein preps to work; unfortunately, my solution is unpublishable. It's an unnamed, hand-sized, stuffed purple dragon with a fuzzy mane and shiny wings. I got it at a museum gift shop on a particularly bad protein-prep day. Something, I have no clue what, told me to buy it. When I returned to the lab, magic started happening. I had thought all my protein had precipitated, but it was back in solution. My column, which I had jerry-rigged so that it would run overnight, ran perfectly, and without leaks. Hmmm. Could I attribute success to my additional experience with protein prep? After all, this was the third attempt. Could it be that all the ingredients were fresh this time? Normally, I salvage and steal from my labmates. Nope, I concluded without shame or scientific scrutiny, it has to be the dragon. From that moment on, it became part of my protein prep ritual, sort of my protein god. Each time, I would rub my dragon, and then harvest my Escherichia coli. In time, my labmates, naysayers at first, became believers. The unnamed one is now our unofficial lab mascot. Did we really believe that this silly dragon would improve our protein preps? Of course not, but it didn't stop us from rubbing him each time we needed a bit of luck. It was so easy to believe that a stuffed toy could influence the protein expression and subsequent protein prep, because, it worked last time! A lot of science involves preceding successes, which makes mundane tasks, such as protein preps, maxi- and minipreps a bit ritualistic: We do it this way because this is the way it's always been done, lest we anger the gods or, if applicable, our adviser. Some unofficial observations of other rituals or deities: Many people have PCR altars. In this spotless area, we give offerings of DNA and primers and it, in return, gives us genes/bands to study. We have to keep this area immaculate with fresh solutions and in some cases, a protective covering, lest we have contamination or worse, an artifact. Many of us have what I call autoclave deities. These idols were things we thought we could autoclave safely, but it turns out, we could not. These include certain kinds of vials, Falcon tubes or anything Styrofoam. These attempts at sterilization, resulting in melted blobs, can take on unusual shapes once they cool. Some people claim they see their adviser's face in the melted mass; others draw on their own likenesses. Almost everyone displays their new Baals on their desks or benches, not as decoration, but mostly as a warning or totem to others: Beware of the autoclave god; it will claim the most prized plastic unless you treat it right. The autoclave always reminds me of volcanoes and how people threw offerings into them. While we don't make formal offerings autoclave, it does seem to claim its own. As does the NMR spectrometer: a big, tall, shiny metal can that often vents nitrogen from frozen tubing. Into this metal beast, you place your most precious samples and pray, not only for good spectra, but that some experimental fluke doesn't turn your sample into a precipitate. It's a good idea to offer a prayer: "Oh, great metal beast, please accept my sacrifice." Of course, not all of us make offerings to strange pieces of equipment. Some construct their own gods: little figures sculpted out of clay (mostly crystallographers do this, and their idols seem like voodoo dolls, with an eerie likeness of the adviser); adhesive tape fashioned into various shapes, such as tape balls; microcentrifuge tubes turned into what looks like jewelry (but no one wears it); and even aluminum foil, used to secure the sterility of flasks and tubes, assumes new shapes and meanings. I've seen, and even created, some rather magnificent sculptures from foil. I like to think of them as idols of creativity that help us channel our creative energy. As scientists, when we're dealing with the oft-unknown biological systems or the equally frightening funding agencies, we need to have rituals and "deities" to deal with our successes, failures, and downtime. We should all have our lab mascots and rituals. As for me, I still have my dragon. Throughout the years, I have found that the purple one works best if I also optimize the IPTG, salt concentration, and other various factors that go into a protein preparation. The dragon continues to make new converts. A fellow postdoc, depressed over a failed protein prep, was a bit shy at first about rubbing the fuzzy one's tummy (in a strictly clockwise fashion) but realized the truth when everyone began getting protein. Of course, it could have been the Twinkies that someone had laid at its feet. We'll never know. Caryn Evilia caryn_evilia@yahoo.com is a postdoctoral fellow at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.

Rituals and Deities in the Lab

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Caryn Evilia

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April 2004

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