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Week Nine: Wrapping up experiments and prepping for final week

This week was super busy!  We've been trying to wrap up the experiment from a couple weeks ago and I've been working on my final presentation for next Friday.  Although I am sad that this adventure is almost over, I can't wait to see what doors it has helped me open for the future!

Monday:  I purified the RNA from last week.  Because we had 20 samples, it took quite some time.

Tuesday:  I quantified the purified RNA from yesterday.  Dye was diluted 200x, samples diluted 20x.  When we went to quantify the RNA, we were observing very high levels, some undetectably high.  We checked for DNA contaminants using qPCR, and we found DNA contamination in about half of our samples.  We then repurified these DNA contaminated samples and will requantify them tomorrow.

Wednesday:  RNA was requantified, and then all the RNA was converted to cDNA and amplified using qPCR.  I amplified the cDNA with primers for archaeal amoA.

Thursday:  Today I presented my final presentation to my senior scientist, Dr. Holly Simon.  Overall I'd say it went pretty well.  Some of my figures came out hard to read, so I need to tweak them slightly.  Additionally, I had so much data to present, I will work on narrowing it down, and focus on the data with more significant implications.  After the presentation, Mouzhong and I collected sediment samples from our sitewater, 25ATU, and 86ATU conditions because the 25ATU condition achieved full ammonia oxidation, even if it took a week longer than the less/uninhibited conditions.

Friday:  Today we extracted DNA and RNA from the sediment we collected yesterday.  There was a brown bag lunch for the interns with some of the grad students here at CMOP, talking about the graduate school admissions process, life as a grad student, and basically anything we had questions about.  I met with two of the students in the Peterson/Needoba lab to discuss potentially continuing my education here at CMOP. 

Overall, a very busy week.  We'll see what this last and final week brings!