Monday, March 19, 2012

POSITIVE RESULTS FINALLY


March 01st.
      Today I made a gel by myself and Ms. Urban watched as I was putting it together to make sure I was doing everything right. I followed the Instructions on measuring the agarose, buffer and microwaving time in intervals then carefully adding Ethidium Bromide. Afterward I cross-linked the little dish to put the PCR reaction in while the gel was cooling. I then prepared the gel rig and poured water in it before setting the gel in. Afterwards I spun my PCR reaction from last week and added 1 microliter of the blue dye before putting it in the gel underwater in the gel rig.
      The process that was once almost impossible for me to accomplish in an hour took only a few minutes to do. I set the PCR reaction into the gel and turn the gel rig on then waited for 5 minutes to let the EtBr bind and the electricity flow through the gel.
      After five minutes I took the gel to the UV table to take a picture and see if the condition we set from last week worked. And the results were marvelous. The conditions worked perfectly, for the second group; with decreased water and MgCl2. As shown below the bands we very clear and there wasn’t much smug in them.


KEY:
White bands= Positive results
Red-Orange smug= Dyes
Dark bands= original gel wells

   

As any lab experiment to verify that the conditions work and will work for the species we set up another experiment with the same conditions. The PCR reaction was small and using the same species. I left the reaction in the thermo cycler with the 51 0 C annealing temp. In two weeks I will make another gel and see if it worked.


6 comments:

  1. Very nice post, Josephine. I get a good sense of your activities and progress by reading your blog. You seem to be making nice progress in your internship.

    It seems that your gel picture did not post properly - please fix.

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  2. Yeah! after reading your blog, I am so glad to see that it finally shows the result that you are expecting. I am having problem seeing your picture which is such a bummer; however, I have worked with PCR reaction in AP biology last year and i can imagine a little, i guess, how it looks like. It was cool to see you manage to do the whole reaction by yourself and work it through. you must feel really proud of yourself :)

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    1. Thank you Peggie. I am proud of myself, when I first started this lab I thought I wouldn't get positive results...but I was wrong. :) It is really exciting.

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  3. This lab is so exciting!!!! I think I just did similar lab during my Bio class!!!(I'm not 100%sure...) I wish I can see your successful result picture!! By reading your blog, I can feel that you are deeply committed to your project and making great progress! I am glad that you finally get good result:) Even though I don't fully understand the lab that you are doing, I am happy that I can find some connection with me! Tell me more about the complicated part that I do not really understand and show me the pictures!:) I would love to know more information about your lab!

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    1. I will try and get the picture part sorted out. Thank you for your support. :)

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