Hey everyone,

Happy (almost end of ) Finals Week! Hope the odds were EVER in your favor… (Hunger Games, anyone? Yeah?)

This goes without saying, but I’m so thankful that I had the opportunity to work in this lab with all you guys! Thanks for making this semester truly amazing. From all the corny bio jokes to the sporadic worry sessions about whether we’re doing the lab right, this lab has been an unforgettable experience.

I wish I could continue this lab with you all next semester..

Best of luck to everyone next semester, and Merry Christmas everyone!

I’m finally about to catch up with most of you guys in lab! Yesterday, I went into lab and prepped/purified my DNA pellet for DNA digestion. Thankfully, I had help from Dr. Adair and was able to conduct the procedures without much trouble.  Otherwise, I probably would have been stressing out.

Something funny that did happen though–when we placed the microcentrituge tubes into the mini-centrifuge to spin/dry the filter for the final time, we heard a loud click as it began spinning.  We didn’t think much of it, and assumed that it must’ve been something snapping into place as the tubes were spun.  We were wrong.  When we looked inside the machine after the two minutes was up, we found that the plastic microcentrifuge tubes had cracked and shattered.  It’s never happened before, but luckily, my columns with the were undamaged, meaning my phage DNA is still safe! Yay!

I’m not even sure what I would’ve done if my phage DNA just splattered everywhere in the centrifuge.. I probably would’ve had a mini melt down. No joke.

I’m really excited to start the digestion today! I can’t wait to finally see the infamous DNA that we’ve been studying for so long.

Hey everyone!

Our first semester is coming to an end and unfortunately, I won’t be with you guys next semester! I switched my major to biomedical engineering a couple weeks ago and turns out that biology isn’t a part of the degree plan for BIOmedical engineering. Hmm…Weird. But, it is what it is!

But on a more exciting note–I am SO pumped about our EM phage photos! I literally squealed when I saw mine.  I was just a litttttle too excited. All the more reason I switched into biomedical engineering! The technology is just so fascinating.

On Monday, I plated a spot test for my ten 10-fold dilutions of my newly purified lysate. When I was spotting the 10 microliter drops of lysate dilutions, the drops didn’t form a circle/drop. The top agar seemed to be solidified (I waited about 7 minutes and doubled checked to make sure it wasn’t runny or moving). Either way, the drops spread out and made odd shapes, only to be absorbed by the TA within seconds.

My concern is that the drops ran together and will affect the titer calculation.. Hopefully this won’t be a huge problem since we only really look at the lower concentrations for calculations. Fingers crossed!

Finally! It seems that most of us in the lab are in the stages of purifying. This is so exciting.  Pretty soon we’re going to be sequencing our own, individual, cute little phages! Go us.

Since this is a late post, it’ll probably be a pretty lengthy one.. I’ll try not to be so boring.

On Monday’s lab, I found out that my group’s Phage Buffer had been contaminated. (Curse you, contamination!)  So, I’m sure you all know what that means.. EVERY plate was contaminated.

My 10^0 plate was completely contaminated, while the rest of the plates had these dots of contamination.  Literally like perfect randomized polka-dots.  Cool stuff.

However, I was able to pick an isolated phage from my 10^-3 plate, a tiny little area that was pretty far from contamination!  If you look really, reaaaally closely, you can see the lysed area between the “(6)” and the date.

Hope everyone is having no issues with contamination! It seriously is a pain in the butt.

Today, I adopted an M. smeg phage from Jade! (THANK YOU SO MUCH)

After trying almost ten soil samples, I just wasn’t finding either Arthro. OR M. smeg.

I just think I had bad luck when it comes to finding phages.

But anyhoo–as of right now, I’m in the process of purifying the phage I picked today and hopefully, I’ll be able to isolate a single phage with no contamination or major problems.

Thankfully, we’re all used to the lab setting now and aren’t having too much trouble finding materials or preventing contamination (yay!).

Either way, I can’t wait to see the plates I spotted next week!

Like the many others in the lab, fingers crossed!