Two weeks ago, we announced that the blog of BioTechniques Journal had selected “Grad School, I Love You (But You’re Bringing Me Down)” as the 2012 “Science Parody of the Year.”

Now I’m excited to announce that the “Lab Comedy of the Year” for 2012 is Vol I: How to Run a DNA Gel (Molecular and Cell Biology Training Video Series). The video stars Nate Krefman (a graduate student in the Drubin/Barnes Lab) and Aaron Welch (a graduate student in Doug Koshland’s lab). The video was filmed and directed by graduate students Brock Roberts (Henk Roelink’s lab) and Robbie Calderon (Krishna Niyogi lab, Plant and Microbial Biology). The video was conceived and produced by Nate. The scientific journal BioTechniques put the “Science Parody of the Year” to a readers’ vote this week on their blog.

The winning video is actually the first in two part series. The second video, Vol II: How do Do a DNA Mini-Prep (Molecular and Cell Biology Training Video Series), stars Robbie and Brock, and was directed and produced by Nate.

All of the videos were produced for an annual funny movie event called MCB Follies held by graduate students in UC-Berkeley’s Department of Molecular and Cell Biology. Look for more of these sort of videos from Nate and other graduate students in the Drubin/Barnes lab in the future.

2012 “Lab Comedy of the Year”: