Not much progress…

10/3/10

I hope my PCR was a bigger success than the football game this weekend. Anyway, Thurday I started on my primer design. I couldn’t figure out how to do the ending part, so I haven’t turned it in yet. I figure I can get help during the 14 hours I’ll be in lab this week. Yes, I am THAT behind. Friday I did PCR for my target…first try. Someone was supposed to freeze it for me, since I had to go to Dallas. I am coming in to run it on the gel tomorrow, so I will update again after I get the results. Hope everyone has a good week. I will be seeing you lots this week :]

10/7/10

Below are the results to my PCR. This is the 2nd half of my sample because I ran the first gel backwards then dropped it on the floor. Luckily, I had this other half. It worked. The magnesium definitely had an affect as you can tell.  

Since lane 6 had the most DNA, I optimized the PCR protocol. I put 4 mM of MgCl2 in each lane except for the control. The bands turned out very bright which is great because that means I have a lot of DNA to work with for cloning. One strange thing happened though. Candace and I ran our gel at the exact same time, and we were the only ones to use the power source. However, mine ran WAY slower. Dr. B said that I could have added more agarose or that the TAE may have been stale. I did use TAE that was from yesterday already in the set-up since I didn’t want to waste any. From now on I am always going to use fresh TAE, though.