Week 2: DNA Analysis

After copious amounts of DNA extractions the first week of work I was ready to start some new projects.  This week I spent a few days running gels, which ended up not yielding the best images; the resulting bands were extremely faint if apparent at all in many of the runs due to the extremely low concentrations of DNA in the collected water samples.  However, we were able to identify a correlation between the quality of the images (whether there were bands present) and the quality of the filter from which the sample was collected.  Looking back at sample collection field notes, we found that the samples that yielded poor gel images were often those samples collected through problematic filters (very dry filters/salt accumulated filters).  I was also very excited to finally learn how to perform qPCR experiments this week.  I had no previous experience with qPCR other than learning about it in college lectures/labs, so I was eager to actually get to apply my knowledge.  I got to perform a few practice runs with only a few samples, which was quite enough for my first time because I soon found out that qPCR takes quite a lot of concentration and patience and errors are easy to make.  Furthermore, I learned how to analyze the qPCR data in order to calculate efficiency, which we typically want to fall between 90-110%.  Unfortunately, my first run yielded 85% efficiency, so it seems I have work to do.