It's probably time to take a break when...

I just failed to realise pAP3::GUS is a transcriptional fusion reporter and therefore only expresses if and only if there is transcriptional activity of its promotor (hence pAP3); thus 35S driven expression of the same protein would not necessarily result in GUS activity, unless shit exists to activate it, including itself, if it is thus inclined. Should I take a break from my slides and go home now?

(this is for a class. Will never look at goddamn flowers the same way every again. I hate you, ABC genes. Past 3am the morning a talk is due about them anyway...)

PISTEFUCKINGLATTA*! SEPALLATA! (those look really scary about now...)

Also, Nature papers become unbearably dense when you have to present about every single fucking sentence in them...

*grumble grumble*

*Does the FUCKING insertion have to be italicised too? What do gene naming conventions say about expletive inclusions?

PS: For those of you who have absolutely no fucking clue what I just rambled on about -- lucky bastards!!! [ok the HTML got fucked; I'm not rewriting that, no fucking way] is AP3 expression, but that's just shitty wording and is getting me really bloody confused at this hour. Grrrrrr. I was like "WTF won't it show GUS if the fucking same thing is constitutively expressed via 35S!?" and then hung my head in deep shame and embarassment. And profanity.

5am update: Screw this I'm off to bed... been working on this for the past 12h pretty much non-stop... can totally wing it tomorrow if I have to. Actually, I'd do a lot less preparation if it wasn't a group project. Other people seem to have phobias of 'winging it'. Too bad, because all you really need to do is sound convincing. I mean, it works for me in lab meetings... isn't that how science really works anyway? (oh shit, the secret's out now!)

And yes, I made all the slides myself despite it being a group project. Did I ever mention groupmates can actually somehow manage to slow you down rather than help sometimes? Even if they're willing to help, they can still be fucking useless? Well, now I have. Grrrr.