Week 3

So now into week three I am definitely getting a tighter grasp on the project and the techniques we're using to gather data.  Tuesday I met with my senior scientist, mentor, and a few others from the lab to discuss some more long term goals for the project.  This proved to be very effective in boosting my understanding of the project vs just the literature review on the project.  Communication is key!

We started off the week finishing where we left off with the previous 12 samples isolated last week.  We were able to run gel electrophoresis on the Archaea and SAR 11 PCR products in which bands were present for most samples.  Eventually we purified and stored the samples for microarray analysis later on. 

The next step was PCR amplification with Pseudo-nitzchia primers.  We finished up in the same process described above.

We also managed to isolate 14 more samples including those cruises from June and September 2008.  The 8 isolation samples from June 2008 all showed up positive for total DNA on the electrophoresis run Thursday (see photo). 
Next week we will attempt to finish isolating all of the cruise samples and eventually move on to microarray analysis of our organisms' DNA.

To end the week we took a trip to the Bonneville Dam where we were given a tour and Vanessa even provided a delicious lunch from the deli on campus.