Yesterday was so much fun! Y’all did such a great job on your scientific posters. We have worked so hard and accomplished so much in the past year, and it’s great to see our work compiled in this way and on display for others. I’ll be presenting in the BSB tomorrow so we will see how that turns out. But I’m feeling confident after practice on Tuesday and seeing how much we have all learned both semesters. Shout out to Chelsea and Meredith- I love our group and am excited that our poster was printed! After critiquing everyone’s posters, I can see what I works well and what I would have done differently, so it has been a great learning experience.
Unfortunately, today was a slow day. Meredith and I had a good system going last week, but our plans to continue were halted by a series of problems with downloading the file and my virtual box. Mine froze today! It was extremely frustrating. We finally got back in the rhythm of things towards the end of the period but we still have many more to do. And let’s not forget the drama about CL… But it’s all resolved now!
Verifying and altering gene annotations is very time consuming. My eyes are getting tired from staring at Apollo for so long. But as we all know is necessary for every type of scientific research, checking and rechecking your claims is incredibly important. So I guess I’ll have to bear with it and try to enjoy what we’re working on! Once we have finished working through every gene annotation, does anyone know what we will do next?
Due to two large gaps in our section of the genome, our group had to spend a lot of time trying to agree on which genes to call. It is very difficult when the genes aren’t predicted for you! But on the positive side, it was easy to make a presentation out of it since we had so many tough calls. It was also great to see this collaborative effort- Bayless and I had made completely different calls for one of the gaps, but with the assistance of our other members, we decided to go with one of Bayless’ predictions and one of mine. We had both seen something that the other one had not, proving the worth of checking the genes many times in groups.
Annotating genes on Benedict has been both more exciting and daunting because it is one that has never been annotated before! I found two genes in large gaps that were not predicted by the logarithms, and I’m looking forward to comparing with my classmates that overlap sections with me. We will see how they align!
This new lab is much different than what we did last semester- doing a wet lab in the BSB required a more exact procedure, with defined measurements and more. This semester, we are trying to annotate genes, which is much less exact. It is strange that there is no “right” answer, so this lab should prove to be an interesting change from what we have done previously. When we first started working on these computers in the basement of Moody, I imagined that this semester would not be as fun as the last one. But annotating genes on our own last week was very fascinating! I’m excited to be working with Benedict once it has been sequenced and sent to us.
It feels so strange that lab is over! I finished most of the procedure a while ago, but it felt so final when we sorted and cleaned everything up. It has been a good semester, and I have really enjoyed what we’ve been doing.
On Wednesday, I and a few other students analyzed our gels on the computer in the lab. I was able to compare my gel electrophoresis results with those from HHMI. Mine looked the most similar to two in the grouping A2, but does not have a direct match. With analysis complete, I’m not sure what is left for the coming weeks.
So much has happened in the past few labs! This has definitely been my favorite part. First, I isolated my pure DNA (finally!) and followed that with the restriction digest.
I'm focused on performing the restriction digest.
After that was complete, I was able to do gel electrophoresis! It was very exciting to see the second two cut the DNA so well.
phage DNA gel electrophoresis performed on 11/9/10
And last Wednesday, the most exciting part was to finally see my phage! Her name is Edna and she looks beautiful 
It was fun to work with Dr. Rushing and the electron microscope. She thought my phages looked like they were dancing, and I agree It feels so good to begin to see these results after all of our hard work this semester.
Last week was finally a successful one. My titer was 3.7 x 10^9, so it was great enough to continue on. I added the nuclease, and later the precipitant, which constituted for a very long procedure. Thursday I centrifuged, and now I have a lovely pellet to work with this week!