Kev's walkabout: Weekly report!

Friday, 1 June 2007

Weekly report!

Wow, time files. It’s already Friday, and it seems that I hadn’t really done very much over the week! Hmmm, lets see if I can remember what I did… Monday – supposedly to tutor my student, but then my student rang me up last minute to say that she was called back to work! Yup, she’s doing part time work in a sandwich bar in Randwick… I stay in Randwick, don’t remember seeing her… but then, I seldom venture outta my home for meals! LOL…

Now Tuesday.. Hmm.. I remember we had a lab presentation, where Oliver, the newest guy in the lab is giving a presentation to us. The PhD work that he did by in Germany was quite interesting, and certainly contributed to the scientific community… Oh… probably one thing of interest for our Tuesday lab presentation is the cakes!! Previously, our presentation was just normal presentation. Then came the market spoiler Cat! LOL.. She distributed chocolates and candies during her presentation and the snow has since been rolling then. The candies were followed by a cake, 2 cakes, 2 cakes & drinks, and up till 3 cakes and drinks when it was Oliver’s turn! Oh Gosh! Soon, we will each have to eat a cake each for each presentation! LOL…

What did I do on Wed?? Hmm… can’t really remember, guess it’s the usual lab work?? Getting old already… And Thursday? Think I did some PCR and culturing of E.coli… and today? Well, today is really instrumental in my whole experimental process I think. ‘Cos, I will be relying on this technique called EMSA to detect for DNA-binding proteins. So, I had planned to do some preliminary studies using EMSA before I fully engage myself into it. Preliminary studies are important, as it allows me to gauge the sensitivity and workability of the system without wasting too much of my precious protein samples. Anyway, the whole process was extremely mind-zapping… mentally beat… I had to cast DNA polyacrylamide gels only to find I didn’t have the require buffer, and hence need to go prepare the buffer etc… And then when preparing my samples for the run, I’m supposed to use 1x buffer, but I used 2x buffer instead. But luckily, I realized it early, and redo everything again… Bottom-line – mind zapping experience. And how did my experiment result turn out?!! The setting up of the system is good, but EMSA is not as sensitive as I had hoped. It can detect like 1ng (1 in 1,000,000,000th of a gram) of DNA. I was kinda hoping it go even lower… haiz... And, I did not see any DNA-binding protein as well… haiz… maybe my system isn’t well optimized yet…

A picture of my experiment result... see the blue arrow? If there is protein binding to the DNA, the band will be on top of the current position... =( obviously there isn't any here...

My experimental set up.. Cos I need to keep the temperature low, and I find it troublesome to transfer everything to the cold room, so I put the whole gel tank in a sytraform box containing ice! LOL

Yeah! I receive the generic ink that I bought online! They are really superby fast!! Delivered the next day!! Express post mah!! Fast and cheap.. good!