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Week 3 & 4: Environmental Sample Extraction

During these two weeks my time was spent trying to get my newly extracted CR-20 samples to amplify.  We discovered that the problem was our primers.  Somehow the general bacterial primers we were using had degraded.  We ordered new primers during week four.  Because we had bad results when we sent our first set of CR-20 samples to the primate center for sequencing we decided to clone them again and send them back to make sure a mistake was not made.  If this comes back with the results that don't show contamination, than we won't have to amplify the samples that we extracted during week 3.
During week 4 I extracted samples from Strawberry Hill and Cape Meares which are two other places besides LaPush, Columbia River, and Newport Hydroline that Suzanne took on the cruise in May. We are planning on using the teberflip primers on these samples because we don't have enough money to go through the whole cloning process.  We worked on puttin these samples through the Stable Isotope probing porcess and collecting the bands.  Those samples are waiting for the primers that are coming at the beginning of week 5.
On the Friday of week 4 I gave a presentation on my progress in the first half of my internship.  All the students gave a presentation on this day and it was interesting to hear about what all the other interns are doing this summer. I enjoyed talking about the hard work that I had done on my project and answering questions on my progress. It was good to be able to relate my project from last year to my owrk this summer because it is similar in techniques but i am using the processes to learn about different organisms and characteristics.