Good Luck or Good Research?

April 5, 2022

Scientific research depends on many uncontrollable variables; a machine working properly, the reagents working and interacting the intended way, or even managing the organisms you are working with. Over these past few months, my research partner and I have been getting great results from our experiments but has this been a streak of good luck or good research? I will explain what was not going to plan before the last few months, what variables we decided to change, and what the outcome of these changes were.

What Went Wrong

At the start of the fall 2021 semester, my research partner and I started our experiments with one of our target genes, gclm, and continued working with our other two target genes, gstp1 and gstp2. Our experiments for gclm during the beginning of the semester did not yield great results. Now don't get me wrong, the results were still good but not enough for us to move on to the next step. We continued to replicate the experiments and things started to look up. The same could not be said for our gstp1 and gstp2 genes.

The gstp1 and gstp2 genes are two copies of one gene with slightly different sequence. My research partner and I were doing our experiments with these two genes at the same time because they are considered to be synonymous. The results from simultaneously working with gstp1 and gstp2 consistently gave inconclusive results. Although inconclusive results can tell us a lot about how the experiment is working, this meant we had to repeat the same experiment over and over in anticipation of a different result. This did not happen. We kept getting the same inconclusive results. We had to switch up our approach with the gstp1 and gstp2 genes.

What We Changed

With our gclm gene, there was not much to change. All we needed to do was continue to replicate the experiments and practice refining our techniques. After this, we were getting excellent results. With our gstp1 and gstp2 genes, we had to back track and think about what could be going wrong. My research partner and I met with our professor to talk about potential issues and how we could troubleshoot these issues. Because we were working with these genes simultaneously, I suggested we working with them separately in case the reagents were interacting in some way. We decided to move forward and work with gstp1 and gstp2 separately and started to see promising results.

Where We Are Now

At the end of the fall 2021 semester, we were able to get great results for our gclm gene and were able to move onto the next steps during January of 2022. At the end of January, we had excellent results and were able to start focusing more of our efforts on gstp1 and gstp2. In the beginning of the spring 2022 semester, we started to focus on working with the gstp1 and gstp2 genes separately. The results from this change yielded the best results we have ever had with these two genes. Now all of our experiments are continuing to progress well and are looking promising as we start to near the end of the spring 2022 semester.

To answer my question at the beginning, has this been a streak of good luck or good research? I believe it's both. My lab partner and I are some of the oldest lab members of the group and have had time to practice and refine our techniques. We also have extensive knowledge of the project which has allowed us to collaborate and troubleshoot with a greater understanding of what is going on. Some experiments really are about luck and the way things work out that day. At the end of the day, it's about doing your best and getting great results.