The Kornfeld Lab

Today I will be giving you a tour of my lab. It is a nice lab… I work in the Lazar Research Building (LRB) which is the newest building on campus… for now. Since Craig Mello won the Nobel Prize, we've got a lot of funding for new research buildings. There will be a twin building to the one that I work in for a gene therapy center (it will host most of the RNAi and cancer research).







I like the building but I don’t like the way that it is set up. In most institutions each individual lab group has their own laboratory. We do not have that. Instead, there are many many lab benches and each individual lab group is assigned a certain number of benches (the area in between benches is called the “bay”). It is a good way to facilitate collaboration, but it is very noisy with this type of design. You can see the rows and rows of lab benches below.






Now I’ll walk you through areas that I occupy the most. This is bay 370R. Behind me is my desk and the desk of the lab manager Laura and the lab technician Antonella.







I have shown my desk in the state that it is in when I’m doing a lot of experiments throughout the week (and therefore never at my desk). I usually have my planner open (because I have to know at what day/time certain things must be done) and also my lab notebook (this is where I record all of my procedures, raw/ analyzed data, interpretations of my results from all experiments and the things I plan to do next to follow up on each experiment). My desk is messy, but my lab notebook is extremely organized… it has to be. But when I am working on my desk, things are organized neatly into stacks and I’ve got my swifter dusting cloths in one of my drawers because I detest dust on my working area.











Right next to my desk is my lab bench working space. This is where I work with most things that don’t need to be totally sterile or when I’m working with E. coli or Mycobacterium smegmatis. Both are totally non-pathogenic (uh, unless you drink it) and can be used in “open” areas. Other strains that I use must be used in the laminar flow hood (aka: "hood"). I spend quite a bit of time counting colonies grown on agar plates. You see me doing that below. Fortunately, I've got a pen that counts every colony that I touch so that I don't have to keep track in my head. This is a benefit since I am easily distracted.







I do a considerable amount of work in the “hood”. Mostly with the white blood cells that I use for my experiments and a strain of TB that can’t hurt me, but could change my skin tuberculin test outcome. The idea behind the hood is that because of the way that air circulates through this, and because of sterilizing with ethanol, it is considered a sterile environment. To keep it this way, anything that comes in/out is thoroughly sprayed down with 70% ethanol and/or vesphene- which effectively kills the TB that I work with. (Dad- did you notice we don’t use bleach to decontaminate?? Side note- Bleach causes stainless steel to rust over time so we don’t use it on the stainless steel hoods.) Here is a picture of 2 post-docs in the lab, Greg and Therese, using the hoods.






Ok, moving on now. This is the other bay that our lab uses- 370S. This is where Greg, Therese, YunSeung and Jinhee have their desks/benches.







This is the fluorescent microscope that the lab uses. (It is not the one that I used to take those pretty pictures that I sent you mom… I’ll show you that another time). I do use this to do microscopy that doesn’t require the features of the confocal microscope that I use the majority of the time. But, this is very good scope. We can make movies on it etc. Jinhee and I are the major uses of this fine machine.








You might be surprised of the common things in the lab that we have that you have at home. We have a microwave for melting gel’s. We also use common refrigerators to keep things at 4°C and freezers to keep things at -20°C. We also have a special freezer called the “minus 80”. This keeps things at -80°C and as you can imagine, that is very cold.








This is my advisor’s office. Hardy Kornfeld, MD. The hallway outside of the lab area is lined with offices for people who are more important than me. These people take all the credit for the things that grad-students and post-docs do. If most of them were to try to do anything in the lab, it would be catastrophic… they are better left to think-alone in their offices- and let us do the technical stuff.





But I better watch what I say because that could be me someday. J My advisor is largely responsible for when I graduate. We are nice to him. But actually, he is possibly one of the best advisors I could have chosen. He has a very good heart and although he wants us to produce data, equally important to him is our general happiness and well-being. For example, he knows that I love being outside and this winter he was worried that I wasn’t spending enough time outdoors so he asked if he and his wife needed to teach me how to cross country ski so that my soul would be satisfied. He also wants to make sure that I get to go home enough… all good things.







Well, that is the general tour of my workplace. Above is the 3rd floor common area where I eat most of my lunches and dinners. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. When new things arise, I may add on. But I thought I would show you all to the place I spend most of my time out here in Worcester. By the way, I hope the pictures turn out… this is the first set of pictures for me to post.