Slowly But Surely

It is a bittersweet moment but it is official.  We are now done with our Phage Genomics Lab.  To be honest, I preferred the wet lab portion of the course because of the hands on stuff we did.  I wish we could go back into the lab and actually find the function of the genes we had no function for.  That would be cool and it is a possible thesis project, but we’ll see.  I hope everyone has a good summer and good luck Anna in Virginia!  Knock their socks off!!!!!!

Well…not really, but almost.  We have finished our functional annotations and now we are working on our presentations that go over our interesting genes.  It should go pretty fast though, mostly because most genes were either interesting or not, as in some had known functions and others didn’t.  Somehow I feel like we are not finishing our job as researchers.  I wish we could go back into the lab and actually find the function of these genes for which there is no known function. I guess that’s a job for someone else……….

Today Frank and I are going to finish our functional annotations!  We’ve been working together and it actually really helps to use two computers.  Other people are already finished but we’ll get our’s done soon.   I don’t care if we still have quite a few left.  We are going to fly right through them, while still doing an awesome job, of course!!!  Then I can get started on my maize genes!!!

The Virtual Box is extremely frustrating, especially when it takes FOREVER to update.  Also, I don’t really understand what we are doing in the first place…

Today is the first day of lab after break!  We have completely finished annotating the genome and sent it off, and it sounds like it will be approved by next week!  Next, we are going to be figuring out the functions of the genes. I’m so excited!

So today I have 3 more annotations to do and I will be done with my section.  I had one interesting and confusing part where Glimmer and Genemark called different genes that overlapped each other by over 50 bp.  How weird!  I went ahead and called each gene independently but I’m guessing I’ll have to pick one over the other eventually.  That’ll be decision I make with whoever else had that section with me (sorry, I forgot who it was).  I’m also scared to get my test back from wednesday!  Baylor would cancel classes AFTER our bio class!  Oh well, at least now it’s out of the way

Today we are going to begin annotating Benedict.  It’s so exciting!!! Honestly, I hope my section is really easy to annotate, though.  I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

So today in lab, the workflow is down again.  Instead of using the virtual box and using phamerator, we are going over some more of ch 18 which is fine with me cause it’s kind of confusing.

Happy Belated Thanksgiving Everybody!!!  Hope everyone is enjoying the break, I know I am.  Well, we’re almost done with the semester.  Sadly, my phage did not get chosen (too much smearing on the electrophoresis gel to run the quality control gel), but it’s okay.  I learned a lot this semester and even with all the ups and downs it was really fun.  I am really excited to work with a phage genome on the computer next semester. I can’t wait and I hope our finals go well!