This has been rather confusing. my last two experiments have been a bit interesting, trying to figure out why my phage won’t show up (at all, even at a 10^0 concentration), and whatever my mistake was, it has left me phageless. I went in to do my Electron Microscopy and I broke Dr. Rushing’s perfect record, as she was unable to find any phages, and she had to give up after about 15 minutes of looking.

At this point, my options are very limited. Based on the current trends, my current lysates are all either faulty, contaminated, or simply containing a phage that refuses to grow (even my lysates that are from my purification rounds) and I have actually been forced to start a plaque assay from my original lysate: the one we all made together at the end of september.

It doesn’t matter very much, since we already have the phage we need, but it is just kinda discouraging to have failed like this. Oh well, I’m definitely looking forward to next semester’s lab more, now.

Hope everybody has a great break.

I finally got to see my baby on Wednesday! After going through so much to have one, my phage’s pretty little face presented itself to me through the use of the electron microscope. The titer I used was extremely high, so we had plenty to choose from when we went to take the picture. We were able to find one that was in amazing condition for the image. It has an excellent angular head with a tail approximately twice the length of its head. I am in love.

So today was the coolest day of lab by far. I filtered my lycate from my 10 plate and then did both steps of the microscopy! Its absolutely insane that I’ve been able to be a part of this as a freshman. As soon as I got to band I told several people (upperclassmen) about it and some of them didn’t even know that Baylor even had an electron microscope! And ironically enough, the day I was super excited about my fancy bio lab it was “nerd day” for the band. (The last rehearsal of the week is always a spirit day and people dress up according to the theme) So while others wore suspenders and thick glasses, I just showed up and got to act like it! Even though it was far from acting.

But now that I think about it, I was in a rush to get to band and forgot to write all this in the lab notebook… looks like i’ll be stopping by tomorrow to do that!

So I feel like I’ve past that checkpoint. Now I’m done with my 10 plate web that I flooded on Monday and will collect the lycate. Wednesday I will start on the graphing for the microscope, and ill get to start working with the DNA of the phage.

So it makes sense why we all have to switch next semester to arthro for the sequencing of the phage, but it defiantly makes me wish I had tried just one more time to get that phage! But I still would be doing the same thing, so in the end theres no difference.

Its kind of funny when I talk to my parents from time to time, they will ask about the lab and earlier in the year I would be able to simplify it enough where they had the general idea of what I was working on. But now and especially the rest of the semester, its gotten pretty complicated for just a casual phone conversation! But I really feel like I have a firm grip on what i’m doing and what i’m going to do next!

Today in lab I found out that all ten plates of my ten plate test and my spot test were all contaminated! I think that it is the Top Agar because my negative was also contaminated. It looked like I had a webbed plate but I didn’t want to flood a plate that was contaminated so I decided to redo both tests. I made new Top Agar and made sure to be extra careful about using the aseptic technique. I am doing two tests at once (the 10 plate test and the spot test of my new lysate to find the titer) to make sure that I don’t have to back track. Hopefully on Wednesday I will get good results and be able to move forward!!