Tag Archives: Parody

Life here in the UC is much better than anything they got out there!

Members of the Drubin/Barnes Lab and others collaborated this month to create musical magic (or madness?) in the form a parody of the musical number “Under the Sea” from Disney’s The Little Mermaid.  The video was a submission for UC-Berkeley Department of Molecular and Cell Biology‘s annual funny movie event MCB Follies.

We hope you enjoy it!

CONCEPT: Akemi Kunibe

LYRICS: Eric Lewellyn

VOCALS: Nathaniel Krefman

BACKING VOCALS: Sun Hae Hong & Akemi Kunibe

CINEMATOGRAPHY: Akemi Kunibe, Jeff Woodruff, & Eric Lewellyn

EDITING: Jasper Weinberg & Akemi Kunibe

STARRING: Eric Lewellyn, Rebecca Lu, & Jasper Weinberg

CAST (in order of appearance): Rebecca Lu, Jasper Weinberg, Eric Lewellyn, Jeff Woodruff, Akemi Kunibe, Kathryn Sievert, Adrienne Greene, Sun Hae hong, Benjamin Gowen, Wendy Ingram, Kevin Barry, Caitlin DeJong, aileen Kelly, Caitlin Shartner, Christopher Alvaro, Jennifer Cisson, Nathaniel Krefman, Colin Cerretani, Thomas Burke, Julia Durack, Christina Glazier, & Michelle Reniere

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LYRICS:

Private industry, it’s a mess. Life here in the UC Berkeley is much better than anything they got out there.

The money is always greener,
In some private company.
You quit you could be a tech there,
But you would be sad you’ll see.
Just look at the world around you,
Right here through the lab room door.
Such wonderful things surround you.
What more is you lookin’ for?

In the UC!
In the UC!
Darling it’s better,
Grab your pipetter,
Come follow me!
Here you can surf for half the day.
With a real job you’ll slave away.
Ya we be chillin’.
Time we be killin’.
In the UC!

Right here all the postdoc happy.
They follow where research go.
The industry doc ain’t happy —
They feel like they sold their soul.
But doc with a job is lucky —
They in for a worser fate:
One day when the boss sell company,
Guess who eatin’ ramen plate!
Uh Oh!

In the UC!
In The UC!
We doin’ science.
We not some appliance,
for makin’ money.
They got a team of robots manned.
We got the Zen of workin’ by hand.
We got no worries,
Troubles or hurries,
In the UC!
In the UC!
Each protein gel here,
Runnin’ so well here,
Bands are so clean.
Even though takin’ lots of class,
Can be a real pain in the ass,
While we be learnin’,
money be earning,
In the UC!

The tub is the bass,
the drum is the flask,
the beakers are good,
for most any task.
Our science is play.
We do every day,
Like Nate, who’s the Duke of Clone.
Yeah!
He put DNA,
In cells on the plate.
The sequence is good.
There ain’t no debate.
Right here where it’s at,
Our microscope phat.
An’ oh that protein glow!

In the UC!
In the UC!
No scientist here,
Like to get pissed here,
You will agree.
We got a campus full a perks.
They got a boardroom full of rich jerks.
Each undergrad here,
Learning like mad here.
In the UC!
None of our tech here,
is pain in the neck here.
In the UC!
Each PI swell here.
Get the Nobel here.
Publish in Science,
Nature, and Cell here.
Stay academic.
The fun is pandemic!
In the UC!

The Drubin/Barnes Lab Has a New Theme Song!

We now present to you a brand new theme song to introduce the world to all of the awesome people in the Drubin/Barnes Lab!

The Drubin-Barnes Lab!
(Parody of The Brady Bunch Theme Song)

Submission for UC-Berkeley MCB Follies 2012-2013
(UC-Berkeley, Dept. of Molecular and Cell Biology)

LYRICS, VOCALS, CAMERA, EDITING:  Nathaniel Krefman

ADDITIONAL VOCALS:  Akemi Kunibe

STARRING:  The Drubin/Barnes Lab at UC-Berkeley (Fall 2012)!

PIs:  Profs. David Drubin and Georjana Barnes

1st GROUP (microtubules, spindles, kinetochores, & mitosis in budding yeast):  Adrianne Pigula (top left), Nathaniel Krefman (center left), Itziar Ibarlucea-Benitez (bottom left), Prof. Georjana Barnes (center), Anthony Cormier (center right)

2nd GROUP (actin cytoskeleton and endocytosis in mammalian cells and budding yeast):  Aaron Cheng (top left square, left), Jasper Weinberg (top left square, right), Rebecca Lu (center left square, left), Lillie Cohn (center left square, center), Akemi Kunibe (center left square, right), Yansong Miao (bottom left square), Prof. David Drubin (center square), Sun Hae Hong (top right square, left), Yidi Sun (top right square, right), Alex Grassart (center right square, left), Daphne Dambournet (center right square, right), Christa Cortesio (bottom right square, left), Eric Lewellyn (bottom right square, right).

________________________________________________

LYRICS:

Here’s the story of a lovely lady.
Who studied what a microtubule’s for.
All her group loves mitosis, like Georjana,
And kinetochores.

Here’s the story of a PI named David,
Who was interested in actin in live cells,
And his group mapped endocytosis dynamics,
Yet they were by themselves.

After their post-docs, where the lady met this fellow,
And named a protein complex DAM instead of DARN,
They knew their groups must form one laboratory.
That’s the way our lab became the Drubin/Barnes!
The Drubin/Barnes!

That’s the way our lab became the Drubin/Barnes!

Rebecca Lu is qualified!

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The Drubin/Barnes Lab would like to congratulate Rebecca Lu who passed her qualifying exam on Wednesday, April 18!

Our note to Rebecca reads: “Congrats! We used to like you! We still do! But we used to, too!”

Here we recount the epic saga of Rebecca’s Ph.D qualification:

After she wrote her proposal, her chair asked her to rewrite it.  Rebecca is smarter than Randy Schekman though.  She just made a copy.

Rebecca brought food for her committee, and Doug Koshland said, ‘I’m gonna have a donut.  Does anyone want one?’ That’s when Rebecca realized that a Qualifying Exam is like some weird quiz where your committee reveals the answers before asking their questions.

During Rebecca’s exam, her committee didn’t ask her a question for 30 minutes.  That would have been a REALLY long question, after all.

Rebecca closed her eyes a lot during her Qual.  She wasn’t sleeping.  She just drew a picture of Randy handing her the Nobel Prize on the back of her eyelids.

You can’t please all the people all the time.  Fortunately, all those people weren’t at Rebecca’s Qualifying Exam.

When her exam was over, Randy said, “Guess what.  You passed.”  Rebecca told Randy, “Dude, you gotta give me time to guess.  If you’re gonna quiz me, you must insert a pause in there.”

Akemi Kunibe was the last grad student in the Drubin/Barnes Lab to pass her Qual.  She’s smart.  She was a tough act to follow.  Rebecca will be an especially hard act to follow, cuz when she finished her Qual, she took all of the dry-erase markers with her.

Rebecca doesn’t know the meaning of the word “fail.”  And that is kinda worse than not passing in a way, if you think about it.  She’s a Ph.D candidate, but she still doesn’t understand simple words.

Congratulations Rebecca Lu!  And thank you Mitch Hedberg for the jokes!

2012 “Lab Comedy of the Year”

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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”:

2012 “Science Parody of the Year”

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I’m excited to announce that the “Science Parody of the Year” for 2012 is “Grad School, I Love You (But You’re Bringin’ Me Down).” The song is parody of an LCD Soundsystem song written and performed by Mark Grabiner (a graduate student in Terry Machen’s lab at UC-Berkeley). The video was directed and produced by Nate Krefman, a graduate student in the Drubin/Barnes lab. The scientific journal BioTechniques put the “Science Parody of the Year” to a readers’ vote this week on their blog.

A second song by Nate, “Blue and Yellow,” a parody of a Wiz Khalifa song, was also among this year’s five nominees. These nominations follow on the heals two additional nominations for Nate’s videos “I’m Bringin’ Stickleback” and “Bad Habits (in Lab)” in the 2011 contest. 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. Readers can expect to see more of these sort of videos from Nate and other graduate students in the Drubin/Barnes lab in the future.

2012 “Science Parody of the Year”:

Nominated for 2012 “Science Parody of the Year” by BioTechniques Journal

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Visit the BioTechniques Blog and vote for “Blue and Yellow (FRET)” or “Grad School, I Love You (But You’re Bringin’ Me Down)” for “Science Parody of the Year”:

These videos were produced for MCB Follies in 2011 by a graduate student in the Drubin/Barnes Lab, Nate Krefman.  Thank you for your vote, and best of luck to the other nominees!

– Nate