I'm DONE! oh wait... I still got another week to go (week 9)

Well… What can I say about this week? I am kinda done, but not done. I have already presented my final presentation, and I did get for the most part good data to work with. However, the resD mutant of one of my deletions was not very consistent, so I am going to be running a horizontal assay next week to try and figure out how it relates to the other data. To do this, I’ll be running two strains from the troubled deletion and one strain from the other deletions along with a wild type strain as a control. By doing this I will be able to better relate the resD data from the troubled deletion to that from the ones which worked out better. Hopefully this works out, and I leave with my data in a good place.

Most of this week was spent getting my data all lined up and into good and understandable figures (that took a ton of time, which surprised me), and developing my final presentation. It was great when I was finally able to get the final version of my lacZ assays all averaged onto one sheet of paper so I could actually begin to compare them and develop conclusions. Also, seeing some things work the way I expected and others to be drastically NOT what I was expecting was a lot of fun because it indicated that I probably have real results! I was super intrigued to find that without the 1^st AbrB binding site, NsrR took over as the primary repressor, and that without either AbrB binding site, almost all repression ceased and that NsrR might have changed roles and become an activator. These were not expected results and were very interesting! Unfortunately, as I alluded to above, my ResD results were not conclusive and I cannot draw too many conclusions from them, but from what I did see, it does not seem to have much effect in single mutant cells. Hopefully my work next week will further confirm this observation.

As to my final presentation, I think it went OK, but I definitely feel my practice sessions went a lot better, and that cutting it down to get it all into ten minutes did make it less clear. I hope everyone liked it and could understand at least 50% of what I did. Pretty much everyone I talked to said that my misgivings were all in my head and that I came across well. I am definitely glad to have that in the review mirror though. It is odd to have already presented my final presentation and to still be coming back to do more work on the project. 

So, next week all I got left before I am outta here is to finish that one assay, and to write up a paper on all that I did this summer. Oh, and clean up my bench as though I was never here... a very strange feeling indeed. Even though I have only been here 10 weeks (including the week I spent in Disneyland in the middle) it feels like I have been here a year. I have had a lot of experiences and have learned a lot about what a research/continuing education experience is like. Definitely was useful in figuring out what I want to do moving forward.