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Week Ten: Wrapping everything up

This was my last week at CMOP and I was both happy and sad about that fact.  On one hand, it means I'm that much closer to starting school again, but on the other hand it meant I wouldn't be able to come into lab and work every day.  Sadly, this last week was mostly spent working on my presentation and final report, meaning not a whole lot of lab work got done.

 

Weeks Eight/Nine: So much to do, so little time

These past two weeks have been so busy, as I'm not only trying to finish up my lab work but also work on a presentation and paper for my internship.  As usual, the majority of my lab work has been running PCR tests and cloning samples when necessary.  

 

Weeks Six/Seven: Sequences, Sequences, Sequences

The last two weeks have been very busy, it's crazy to think I only have 3 weeks left now.  I spent most of my time doing more PCRs, growing cells, and analyzing sequences.  As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I have some new primers that I've been working with, rather successfully.  Nicknamed "Dub 2" primers, these amplify the variable d2 region plus a non-variable region on each end.

Week Five: I thought growing cells was easy!

Although this was a shorter week for me as I had no work on Friday, I was still plenty busy.  After my successful PCRs last week, Pete and I selected a few samples that we would clone and clean-up for sequencing to see what was really being amplified in our samples.  Normally, this is a pretty easy process that just involves inserting the selected gene into "host" cells and then growing them on agar and picking colonies that grew successfully with said insert.

Weeks Three/Four - More waiting

Hi everyone!  It seems like I either forgot to write or forgot to post a blog for week three, although nothing too exciting happened.  I was a 4-day work week because of the holiday, although it really turned into just 1 day of work because we were waiting for an enzyme to come.  Normally it ships overnight but we got it 3 days after we sent in the order, so I wasn't really able to do any lab work.

 

Week Two: The Waiting Game

   This last week consisted of lots more PCRs and cloning samples for sequencing, and while both of these are fantastic tools that work efficiently, they can be long and somewhat tedious, especially when dealing with 50 samples.

Week One: I have not missed you, PCR

Like most lab work done in the Zuber lab, PCR (polymerase chain reaction, a way to amplify a select segment of DNA) was front and center, meaning so was headaches.  While PCR is a wonderful tool and has certainly come a long way from water baths upon water baths, it's still very finicky.

Week One (partially) - Ushering in my 3 summer here!

Hi everyone, it's been a while!  I am so excited to be back in Peter Zuber's lab, it's amazing to think this will be m third summer here!  I remember starting out the summer after my sophomore year and ... can you believe it, I just finished my first year of college.  Time flies by and through it all, I've still held a special place in my heart for research and Peter's lab.  It's nice to know that I've found my calling and I hope to be here for many more summers.

Week Nine - Le Fin!

This was the final week of my internship (so sad!).  I wrapped up some various lab work, still not figuring out the problem with my PCRs.  I also was working on my poster and presentation, getting them ready for the Symposium that was on Friday.

Week 8 - (August 9 - August 13, 2010) My Last Full Week... (sigh)

8/9/10:  My NTS PCR that I did on Friday had been in the fridge for the whole weekend, so I ran it on a gel right away.  I got very peculiar results back - all of my samples were “streaking”, or creating long bands that span the length of the gel.  To be sure it wasn’t the electrophoresis set-up, I cleaned it thoroughly and re-ran the gel, only to get the same reults.  I went even further by throwing out our loading dye (a chemical used to make the PCR samples sink into the wells) and our 1X TAE (used for making the gel and acting as a conductor). 

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