Summer Session-Final Post Until Fall 2015

Hello! Welcome back!

To say that it has been a busy summer would be an understatement. I had intended to take things easy, but as usual the universe had other plans for me.

I have been kept quite busy with my job this summer, so lab time was resultingly reduced. However, I think it is quite understood by the lab coordinators that, without the influx of scholarship money found during a regular semester, more work is necessary during this time to make ends meet.

I look forward to disbursement season and its renewed ability to focus on academics and lab time. I have already reduced my availability at my place of employment, and prepared my schedule for my fall tutoring gigs, in anticipation.

Until the semester begins, enjoy yourselves and this little photo of P. aeruginosa, one of my favorite subjects of my current study.

Summer Session-One Last Experiment

Hello! Welcome back!

This week, I continued repetitive testing of my P-CAT-4 primer set which had shown promise in some earlier test rounds. This was in order to verify that I am receiving the same positive PCR amplification results from separate test runs.

I performed another simple heat extraction on the gram positives (and a Pseudomonas aueruginosa strain that had been causing me some difficulty in a previous round) that I am using for this study, thawed out my previously tested gram negatives, and set up a final PCR (of the session) using that primer set. I then ran a standard electrophoresis gel @100 V for 30 minutes.

The results? Inconclusive. P. aeruginosa showed post-PCR gel banding, but there was a variation in gram-negative results from all previously performed PCRS using the samples I had backstocked. Due to these results, I ordered more stock of these gram-negative species and intend to re-test them for DNA amplification when the next semester begins as I am concerned that the samples may have been corrupted by the length of time they have been in storage.

I simply ran out of time during this session to complete this portion of the study.

Here is a P. aeruginosa gel with a ladder from this week's session; the referenced sample is all the way to the right.