Sunday, June 24, 2007

Logan's Week in a Nutshell

Hey everybody! So, this week was very good, very good indeed. I've made serious progress with my project and so has Brianna (with my help of course (-: ) Journal club was very enjoyable especially with our guest presentation, and the lab was certainly quiet the last two days of the week because Dr. Miesfel and Jun were off to Johns Hopkins to do some politicking in order to renew a grant that the lab currently is funded by.

So, the week started off with a small amount fo the failure I had described in my last blog. I was testing whether the vector I had transformed into competent bacterial cells held the insert of DNA of interest or not. I sadly discovered that they did not! I tested all of my samples with no success. So, what can you do? You start over. I did exactly that and consolidated the work from the 5 days prior into the next 3 while adding in another project; testing the promoter of the 5G1 gene in Aedes Aegypti. To say the least, Brianna and I were efficient in our work this week, and having fun doing it. (I encouraged our lab manager to let us listen to some sweet tunes while we all worked, AND Brianna got a brand new MacBook so we played with that a little) For my projects with the Elongation Factor gene and 5G1 gene I: ran PCR to amplify the sections of DNA of interest, ran a gel, did band purification and prep, ligated into a TA vector, transformed into competent cells, plated those cells, ran colony PCR, cultured the cells that worked best, and miniprepped those cultures. Now I'm ready to do restriction digestions and ligate into an expression vector, transfect with S2 cells, then inject in mosquitoes! I could possibly have results by the end of the week!!!

Brianna is also ready to run restriciont digestions then ligate into an expression vector, though one different from mine with a promoter already coded for. We are both at a point she hasn't reached before in her research, for the results we get will most likely contribute to a research paper the lab will produce at some point.

We also had a sweet journal club on Friday. I gave my presentation (which I hope was comprehensible and at least semi-interesting to all of you) after Greg's and was relieved to have it done with. I'm nothing but excited for the upcoming week and weeks to come.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

So nice to have a successful week. Your presentation was indeed very well done and organized. I learned a lot.