Back at it! :)

After being away from the lab for so long I glad to be back! I came in Monday to talk to my advisors about some internship opportunities over the summer. They were able to advise me about the qualities that someone looks for in an intern and gave some tips which cleared some questions up for me. Besides their awesome advice I was able to get some cultures done so when I would come in Tuesday I would have bacteria to work with. Since I am continuing with my  project my duty now is to test every bacteria I have access to in the lab. This means I will be working with new bacteria however I will continue to use the four main ones I have been working on. I prepared seven bacteria and incubated them over night these seven are:

• Salmonella
• S. Epidermidis
• Serratia Marcescens
• Providencia Stuartii
• E. coli
• Bacillus subtilis
• S. aureus

On Tuesday I was ready to try the Sigma and Epicentre protocol on these seven bacteria however I learned that we ran out of the reagents for each of the kits. I will have to wait until we order and receive them. Instead I tried the Isolation and Purification of Total Genomic DNA protocol and if you all recall this protocol was the least successful for my extractions. I tried it with only E. coli because it is always good to start fresh in an experiment and have an idea of what the outcome should be.  When I tried it back in December I only got DNA for E. coli, the other three bacteria were not visible after the electrophoresis gel run. I would like to try this protocol on these bacteria once more since I have been able to gain more experience in the lab and my skills have grown. Maybe this time I would be able to get positive results for DNA extraction.

 Also Josh gave me a new task to do after I do my DNA extractions instead of running a PCR I would do a Restriction Endonuclease Digestion on the DNA. This procedure is used to somehow cut this DNA sequence and using PCR we can reproduce some of the chunks of sequence that would be missing. I still do not have a clear understanding of this new part of my experiment but my homework now is to look more into it in order to get great results! I will keep you all in touch with this new project!

Electrophoresis Gel Results
First lane Ruler
Second lane E.coli