Week 4: plasmid mini prep at last!

This week I started out by gram staining a bunch of different kinds of bacteria for Stacey, which were really cool to look at. From what I gathered, these cells are native to Arizona, and Stacey mentioned something about one of them possibly being able to absorb radiation? I think? I wish I wrote it down. Don’t take my word for that! Chad also had a really successful fluorescent gram stain that I got to look at as well. On Friday we we were finally able to do the plasmid mini prep. It was neat, but felt pretty tedious because there was 3 groups of us and we were taking turns. When we were done we used the nanodrop to measure the purity. Mine and my partner’s plasmid measured at a 1.9 in purity; the ideal number is 1.8. The higher the number, the more RNA that is present. You don’t want lots of RNA! But not bad for a first try. We tried to do gels on Saturday, but the first try was not successful. We got another gel started, and also decided to do the plasmid mini prep again, which was much faster and a lot more fun this time since we weren’t taking turns, and we each had our own cells. I didn’t get to see the purity results for my cells because I had to leave at 12:30 for work, but hopefully it wasn’t bad! Overall, a very productive week, and I learned lots of new things! 

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