Manas Kaushik Week 6


One of Ben's Plates
I realized for some reason my final blog did not save when I tried uploading it before so here it is now. This was my final week in lab and it came by so fast. I was not ready to leave at all as it had become part of my daily life. The schedule had become so routine and I enjoyed working in a university lab. Ben had been away for two weeks at a conference in England so he had 6 plates of DNA that he needed for genotyping. I planned on finishing most of them this week so that he would not have too much to finish up the rest of the summer. He was trying to work on two projects simultaneously so by completing some of the plates I would make his life a little bit easier. 

Loading dye for gel electrophoresis 
I ran two plates each day.For each plate I did a pcr which took roughly 2 hours. While the pcr was finishing up, I would make a 1-1.5% gel to run the DNA. After adding the ethidium bromide to the gel, I would let it mix for 10 minutes and then pour the gel for it to dry. It usually took around 25 minutes to completely dry. After running the first two plates I realized that not all of the bands were intense because the tag polymerase did not contain enough dye. Before filling the DNA into the wells, I added 3 micro liters of blue loading dye so that the DNA would sink all the way to the bottom. This would allow the bands in the results to be intense so it would be easier to differentiate between different genotypes. 
My results for Hannah's fin clips
After finishing the plates on Wednesday I planned on helping Hannah fin clip two of her tanks to finish my time at the lab. The fin clips were placed in methanol and dried out using a rapd digest. Fortunately both my tanks of fin clips worked and I got great results that Hannah was able to use. I am very thankful for the opportunity that Dr. Mullin’s lab gave me and all the help I received from Dr. Peretz and Mr. Sham throughout the year to prepare for my time in the lab.

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