Blogs

           The beginning of this week was spent finishing up working with the TOPO clones from last week. We preformed electrophoresis to determine which reactions contained the correct inserts. Nine of the sixty reactions produced positive results on our gels, which sounds pretty bad but Christine counts it as success. I am learning that things do not work most of the time and a low success rate is not anything to be afraid of.

This week got off to a great start! I finished making my calibration curve for Alexandrium fundyense and it proved to be an accurate curve.  It was tested by making samples with three randomly made buffers of varying pH and analyzing their fluorescence after adding the dye to them. Then we compared what the curve predicted their pH values to be to what their actual pH values were. The predicted values were very close to the actual values which meant that I accomplished something! The data I collected resulted in an accurate calibration curve.

7 July 16

I started working on my main project for the summer this week. I will be building calibration curves for different phytoplankton to measure the pH of the cells using a fluorometer. To make the curve I prepared samples of the phytoplankton by putting them in different buffer solutions so that their pH will be known. Then I added a dye called SNARF to the samples which is what fluoresces according to the pH of the cell. Preparing the samples for the fluorometer is a very time consuming process, so I have learned that patience is key.

This week continued to be more research on my project and application or practical skills.  I began to refine my experimental plan for studying the photodegredation of metformin, but experimentation will wait until the methodology for analyzing the concentration with HPLC has been refined further. Right now, I am beginning a related side project that will study the effect of different chemicals (including metformin and guanylurea) on the growth of C.vulgaris, a type of phytoplankton.

2 July 16

After developing queries in postgres database - metabase from datanearhere and dataexplore, I had to understand the next step using PHP scripts.

Definition: PHP is a script language and interpreter that is freely available and used primarily on Linux Web servers. PHP, originally derived from Personal Home Page Tools, now stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor, which the PHP FAQ describes as a "recursive acronym."

I have had a wonderful first week as a CMOP intern. I am working in Dr. Tebo’s lab, and my frontline mentor in Christine Romano, a post-doctoral researcher studying the biochemical mechanism of manganese oxidation in bacteria. This summer my project will entail working with her to purify and characterize the Mnx protein complex, a copper containing enzyme that is crucial for microbial manganese cycling.