Natalie Sawaya's blog

This week was a busy one with last minute results, final presentations, and a final paper there was a lot to do. Its a good thing I still have one more week to get things done.

The end of the internship is near, and with presentations coming up next week the pressure is on to get the results we need to progress.

For if you fail you must try and try again.

The lack of success in our cloning experiments is really hindering the progress of the project because we need these plasmids and sequences to make standards for qPCR.

This and that, fun and focus, work and play. This was a very busy week that filled with lab work and field trips

On Monday we tried the katablepharis PCR with Kj3F and ITS4 again with some older samples, and though we got amplification it is possible that the master mix was contaminated because the negative sample amplified. I also began cloning some samples from the last Katablepharis and Ciliate PCR’s of last week.

Beginning with midterm presentations and ending with the NSF site visit it seems like things are going by so fast and progressing, while I am standing still.

On Monday the interns presented their research and we learned about each project's advances and its struggles. It was interesting to hear the other intern’s presentations and how they have been progressing with their research in during the internship. I am looking forward to learning more about these projects at the final presentations.

After a very eventful three day weekend filled with fun at the beach and Portland waterfront fireworks it was back to work.

On Tuesday we went sampling again to Hammond, Chinook, Willapa, Ilwaco and Rogue. We filtered the DNA onto sterivex filters and will be extracting the DNA from these sites most likely sometime next week.

Some experiments are working better than others.

I was more or less on my own this week as Pete was going to be gone for a wedding. And though it was a little nerve racking to be on my own, there was a lot to be done.

I was really excited to start my internship at CMOP, and the first week was very busy. It started on Monday with introductions, pictures, safety training and learning a little bit more about the CMOP internship and my project. I met with my mentor Pete and he explained how this summer I will be focusing on the identification and quantification of protists in the Columbia River estuary.