Week 4 Update – Virtual Screening Has Begun…Sort Of.

Hey everyone!

This week I was supposed to be working on my scaled up protein expression but, sadly, it didn’t work out. Everything began normally on Monday and I started my overnight culture but then Tuesday’s unforeseen events overtook us all and my expression was lost. Instead of mourning over my lost colonies, however, I decided to postpone the expression until this week and begin on the virtual screening of my target, CA7. I begin on Wednesday and the first run lasted until Friday night. I just started my second run from home and am excited for the results! I’ve included an image of my bestranking.lst file from my first run, displaying the top-ranking compounds. I also spent time working on the final draft of my report and preparing for the coming week. This week I will continue the virtual screening of my target (and hopefully get some great results), work on my report, and, of course, perform that ominous goliath known as scaled-up expression. I hope everyone has a great week and good luck in the lab. See you there!

Fig 1. Excel results of bestranking.lst file after first run with CA7 (H9 library)

Week 3 (9/13 – 9/17)

Hey everyone. For me, the early part of this week was oriented around the two refreshers. By Wednesday, I managed to finish both of them and upload my results to GoogleDocs for you all to see. During the latter part of the week, I spent time organizing my lab notebook for Friday’s check, preparing and sending off my Midiprep results to be sequenced, and analyzing the results. I just finished comparing and BLAST-ing my results today so I’ll be uploading those to GoogleDocs this weekend as well. As for next week, I’ll be focusing on two major tasks – The first is the target research report, which I hope to beging very early on (if someone knows where the instructions/guidelines sheet is, please let me know!). The second is expressing and purifying my pNIC-Bsa4 + CA7 protein. I hope to finish this by the end of the week and finally be ready to go with some virtual screening and (hopefully) find some good inhibitors. I hope everyone has a great week ahead of them and I look forward to seeing you all in the lab!