hnpcc | The ants came marching.. (Reply)

The ants have reappeared, apparently under the impression that it's spring.

They're everywhere in the house (I'm still failing to see what could possibly be edible in my cross-stitch) and - yet again - they're in the lab.

Specifically they're eating my 6X stop solution.

I have no idea why they'd want my 6X stop solution. It's not exactly the first thing that springs to mind when you think of "food", even for insects. For starters it's deep blue. For seconds it's really quite sticky - thanks to the glycerol, which is probably what they're after. I still don't think bromophenol blue's going to do them much good though. After rescuing several ants that had either fallen in or were stuck (no, I don't want extra protein in my gels, thanks for asking) I ended up parafilming the bijou bottle to stop them getting in. Then I discovered they'd managed to find a way into my carefully made up plant media - one jar had a tiny, tiny crack in the lid which I hadn't noticed when I was making up the stocks. By the time I came in the next morning the jar was a black seething mass of hungry ants.

I autoclaved the lot of them.

Just incidentally, the lab's meant to be a PC2 containment area. One of the things about PC2 is that there's not supposed to be any insects around and we're supposed to contain GMOs. Given my last experience with the lab ants I don't think we're doing too well on that front.

Still, could be worse. And will be. The Uni's decided they have to crack down on the PC2 front, which means we're being inspected and told what to improve. We have to take our lab coats off leaving PC2 areas and put them on when we enter. All this would be much easier were it not for the fact that the building was built in the 60s, and is not designed around PC2 regulations. The corridors, for example, are not PC2. All the labs are. For me to photograph an ethidium gel I'm now supposed to put the gel in a box, seal it, take off my gloves and coat, carry it through the lab doors, through the stairwell doors, down a flight of stairs, in through another set of doors and finally into the darkroom, magically find another coat and gloves, take the photo, take off the used gloves and the coat, carry the gel and the used gloves (no discards in the darkroom!) back up to the lab, put on a coat and gloves and then discard the gel and the previous set of gloves.

Leaving aside the likelihood of me carrying a gel containing a known strong carcinogen without gloves on even in a box (um, no - EtBr ends up everywhere) you can see how this coats on/off business is going to get tricky.

Fortunately they're building us a new building. Which we can move to in 2005ish. Until then, we're arguing with the biosafety committee.

And very, very carefully not mentioning the ants.