Week 4: Monday and Tuesday Only, What a Short Week!

I was only in the lab on Monday and Tuesday of this week because I was on vacation Wednesday through Sunday. 

That's why this blog post will be particularly short. On Monday we had group meeting where Dimin and I discussed what we would do next in our 2-CAP experiments. We decided to begin the homogenous reactions, but after group meeting I had a professional development seminar so the homogenous reactions would have to wait until Tuesday. For the rest of Monday I prepped for the experiments I would run on Tuesday by making a 1 M HEPES solution and a 10 M NaOH solution. I buffered the HEPES solution to a pH of 8 using the NaOH. 

On Tuesday I made 1 M solutions of NaBH4 and Na2S. Dimin and I ran the HEPES solutions through the HPLC and it gave some odd peaks, so instead of using HEPES buffer we decided to use TRIS buffer. After making the TRIS buffer I started to run the first homogenous reaction with NaBH4. Adding the reductant (NaBH4) to the 2-CAP solution caused the 2-CAP to react and reduce into 2-CPE. This reaction happened very quickly and by the time the HPLC was done running the first sample (15 minutes after I had added the NaBH4) there was no 2-CAP left in the solution. Because of this Dimin and I decided to only take two samples. The first I injected into the HPLC 1 minute after I had added the NaBH4, and there was already a highly reduced amount of 2-CAP. 

Since I was gone Wednesday and Friday Dimin ran two more of the homogenous reactions. We'll see how the results look and decided where to go from here.