The red-eye fly

This is my first lab blog -or should I say "lablog"?. It's nice that something good happened today for me to put it down in this blog.

I walked into the lab this morning, feeling as usual: miserable and frustrated. I am frustrated with my experiments. I have been trying to put a piece of DNA into flies for months now. The way I am doing it is called "injection". Just like a nurse injects drug into you with a needle and a syringe, I inject DNA into flies’ eggs. If everything goes well, I will find a red-eye fly among many white-eye flies in a vial about a month after the injection. The procedure is simple enough, but it is not that easy to make it work. Many things can go wrong and you end up with vials full of white-eye flies and a heart full of frustration. But if you want to do any molecular genetics with fruit flies, you have to take all these trouble to pursue your red-eye fly. In short, Red-eye fly is an injector's Holy Grail.

Today I monkeyed around for a while before settled down at the anethesia bench to check my injection flies. The last time I did my injections was a month ago, and got 21 survivors. From the past injecting experience, I came up with this myth, or voodoo alert as my boss would call it: If there will be a red eye fly, it will be among the first that emerge. I have check all the 21 vials and no red-eye fly yet, so I have lost my hope on this bunch and started another round of injection a week ago. But I am still checking these 21 vials from time to time, just in case. First vial...nothing. Second vial...nothing...20th vial...nothing. Last vial...a red-eye fly! OMG. Is this real? Could it be a runaway fly that got in from outside? My mind quickly went through all the possibilities that this red-eye fly might not be the real one.

It's ironic: when the thing that you desired so much for so long suddently appears before my eyes, your first reaction is denial.

Finally, I decided to jubilate: this fly is indeed my Holy Grail.

So months of effort finally leads to a happy ending.