'Lab Geeks'

Lab Geeks

In the Molecular Sequencing lab at ARUP Laboratories is where this small observation will take place. There are four parts in this lab: the analysis room, the clean room, master mix room, and the dirty room.

As I sit inside the analysis room, where all the test results are verified out to the clients and patients, I take in my surroundings. It is very quiet in the analysis room; the only sound is the clicking of the technologists on their keyboards, hunched over in their squeaking worn down chairs. It smells of paper in this room. The hot smell of warm paper freshly spat out of the printer. It makes my nose dry and burn.

The next room is the clean room. It is where I spend most of my time while at work. I work to keep this room particularly clean because it is where I bring the serum and plasma specimens into the lab as well as where the DNA inside is extracted. We don’t want cross-contamination of the samples and none of us was Hepatitis C, Hepatitis B, or HIV either. We all wear blue lab coats and gloves in this room.

There is constant white noise in the clean room because of the air filtration system as well as the sound of the freezers, Biorots, and Qiasymphony. The latter two are instruments that do automated extractions of DNA. All of this makes it very easy for other technologists to sneak up on me at five o’ clock in the morning.

This room smells of bleach and ethanol after I clean the work benches. Sometimes the combined smell is so overpowering that feel nauseous.

The master mix room smells sterile. It is kept even cleaner than the clean room. It is where we mix the [very] expensive reagents. One box of an HIV kit is about six grand. The only sound in this room is the hum of the freezer and refrigerator. We wear the famous white lab coats and gloves in this room.

The dirty room is named so because of the invisible reagent called amplicon is everywhere. We use it to ‘amplify’ the number of DNA strands so it makes sequencing it on the 3730, a multi-million dollar instrument, more accurate. However if any of it gets into the other rooms, it could cause major potential contamination.

I think it is just in my head, but the air in the room feels thicker or dense somehow, even though it also has an air filtration system AND is the only branch of the lab that has windows.

In the View café inside ARUP there is a wall of windows that looks west over the parking lots and the Salt Lake valley. It is highly entertaining to watch the vulture-like cars circle the parking lots numerous times, scavenging for a parking spot. People will spend ten minutes looking for a potential spot other than just park slightly farther away and walk. I don’t know how God does it; watching us all doing what we do, making our lives harder than they should be.

I believe God is probably the greatest observer of them all.