Several years ago somebody in the lab bought 5mg of guanine. It remained unopened (receiv'd 6/02) when the lab was located across the street, and was ultimately stored in a communal cold room in the lab's current location. In a dessicated plastic container, with evolutionarily related compounds stored with it, it waited. Next to it, experiments from nearby labs were planned and executed. Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, months into years. The focus of the lab shifted from aptamer-ligand interactions (its original purpose) as more students and scientists began to work on the proto-cell.
And then I came along and needed it. This is a monday mind trip (e.g. how does anything come together to work on a monday, when you most need it? Especially when you need to order something, because if it goes out on a monday its guaranteed to be backordered a month or so.).
How history plays itself out, and how we hand off ideas and chemicals to the next generation, and how ultimately this boils down to the universe producing us to explain it, i think it's interesting.
update*: spoke too soon, the compound didn't go into solution and is unusable. It IS monday.
