Week 3

On our first day here, an article was handed out on the importance of "stupidity" in science, realizing that the purpose of conducting research is to answer as-yet unanswered questions, and in order to do that we need to be comfortable with our "stupidity."  After the fourth or fifth time I failed to isolate and purify several DNA fragments (a process that takes, on average, several hours) it was all I could do to hope that I was the right kind of stupid.  However, thanks to the wonderful people at QIAGEN, I was finally able to isolate my DNA using a PCR purification kit and ligate it into a plasmid vector. 

Assuming we were successful (which I'll find out on Monday), all of our fragments of interest will have been ligated into pDG793, the cooperative plasmid, and I'll be able to leave pDH32 (the red-headed stepchild plasmid) behind and move into the next major stage of my project.