Week 6: Splish and Splash

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.

Tuesday was an all day field trip where we visited the Bonneville Dam and hiked to the top of Multanomah Falls. At the Dam we learned about how the Dam provides electricity through hydroelectric power. We also learned about the features of the Dam that take into consideration fish populations by offering alternate routes for the fish to pass the dam through such as the fish ladder. 

Wednesday was Kevin’s birthday so we of course celebrated CMOPtern style with cake and fun.

Wednesday I also I checked for an insert in the cloning reactions from Monday, only one sample had an insert and so I prepped it for sequencing. Though this is the first time in weeks we had a successful cloning reaction only one positive sample out of ten is still not that great.  I also tested some 28s primers for kateblepharis, the K28VF4 and K28VR3 primers worked best but the bands were faint so we tried the reaction again on Thursday with a new enzyme and a temperature gradient for the annealing step. More samples amplified this time but due to the changing temperature in the annealing step most likely caused the reaction to be less specific. We tried the reaction again with a high annealing temp and though there was no streaking on the gel some samples still had multiple bands which could mean the reaction is not specific enough but we won’t know until we send the samples for sequencing.

On Friday we went to visit OHSU’s main campus, it was fun to be able to walk around the campus and learn more about their graduate programs as well as the research that is going on in the different labs.