Memories: Before the Gel Doc Knew Everything
For the last decade or so, whenever I have asked a student to show me a gel picture, 99 per cent of the time I have been directed to the gel documentation system, a.k.a. the gel doc. The gel doc has become a repository of every picture taken: good, bad or indifferent. Most remain buried there until someone finally decides to clean up the hard drive. A few, of course, escape this fate and make their way into papers and thesis. The modern gel doc is a wonderfully convenient box. You place the gel inside, make a few adjustments, or simply accept whatever the machine suggests, click a picture and save it. Yet, many a times, the image produced by this magic box does not look quite like what one actually saw on the trans. The digital world has its advantages, but I feel, one needs to be trained to properly use it. We assume that digital technology is intuitive, that the machine knows best and that the default settings must therefore be correct. Having been trained in older methods of imaging...