Now I Can See the Light

As soon as you think everything has gone terribly wrong that is when you find out that everything will turn out alright.
Helen and I have been performing the yeast-two hybrid assay for a semester and we have slowly been refining the protocol, as we have discovered how much DNA is necessary for the yeast cells to grow on the plates, and how to limit the number of colonies so that we do not get false-positive results due to leaking Histidine channels. At first we tried limiting the amount of cells we put on the plates and the amount of DNA used in the transformation to no avail. Each new round of petri dishes had far too many colonies. Then we tried to put the 3-AT (used to prevent the leaking of the Histidine channels) on top of the agar on the plates this was another frustrating dead end.
We were unsure of what to do next because everything we tried seemed to fail. Helen decided that she would make a new batch of plates with twice as much 3-AT, decreased the DNA, and the amount of cells per plate and we waited to see if any cells would grow. After five days only one or two cells grew so I decided perhaps we should make several plates with various amounts of 3AT. I made the plates during the weekend and on Monday cells showed up on Helen plates. The colonies were late but we were happy to see them. There were only a few colonies on each plate the results were amazing. Helen and I were so happy we finally had a glimpse of success. It always feels so good to do something right.
Sometimes research feels like I’m walking around in the dark and I have no idea where I’m going. With my hands outstretched before me I am looking for the light switch to turn on the lights and often I bump into things and am so close to the light switch but can’t seem to turn the light on. Until one day when I think that I have ended up at one more dead end I have found the light switch and now I can see the light.