Blogs

This week I continued with the schedule that my past weeks have exhibited. Each day I focused on collecting samples from two different time points. This, along with acid washing, occupied most of my mornings. On several of the days, I also measured outstanding manganese oxides samples. To do this I added LBB to the samples and measured the absorbance via the spectrophotometer.

Once I converted all the files to csv format. I could input my data using psftp (download server connect me to cmop servers). Moving along pretty well, had errors a couple of times before the script compile and ran. Therefore my mentor assisted me with the errors in my script. Looking it over and see what the errors were and what I need to do fix the errors. Using the Python .py files, along with postgres commands to compile each python file. Once they modify and compile, I input them in the database on cmop server.

Week 6 followed the same pattern of the previous couple weeks. On Monday, I ran two time points and then measured total dissolved manganese in outstanding samples via the formaldoxime assay. I also streaked a Lept plate with P. Putida GB 1 mutant 245.

Monday was my busiest day yet since I had two time points to measure. I measured time eight from experiment one in the morning and then acid washed equipment before measuring time one from experiment two. This took me quite awhile to accomplish and therefore I spent most of my day focusing on getting my two time points in. I spent the afternoon measuring the amount of manganese (III) present in outstanding samples. The samples already had LBB added to them so all I had to do was measure them.

This week marked my first full week running through my experiment. Matt was gone Monday and therefore it was up to me to make sure that I measured my daily time point correctly. My cultures had grown up over the weekend and therefore there were lots of bacteria in both of the light cultures. The dark cultures exhibited slower growth.

07/16/2015 Day 28

Today I worked on the Phyco data some more. I can separate the dates from the actual data, but when graphing there is a strange error that occurs, that I am trying to plot that contains greater than 2^32. I thought maybe the sheer amount of data, but I then tried to plot only the first ten points and received the same error. I might have to call on some extra help to find out what the problem is.

07/15/2015 Day 27

So I have uploaded the corrected Phyco data into R, but instead of two columns, one for dates and one for data, it’s all smooshed together. I will have to separate it somehow.

07/14/2015 Day 26

                Since I was still waiting to continue my work with the pHstat, I was around the lab helping the other PHD and Masters students the rest of the week. The first two days of the week I was helping out a Masters student in our lab with her cultures. She had cultures already started and I was checking them to see the purity of the cultures so that only a singly type of phytoplankton remained. During this process I learned how to do single cell isolation, which takes a lot of work and patience.

During this week, there was not much for me to do within the lab. Once the biological experiments had been set up in the mornings or the afternoon before, they did not need much maintenance. So once again for this week I did mostly lab maintenance such as acid washing and odd jobs for anyone within the lab as needed.