Category Archives: phage

DNA!

After verifying I had a surprisingly accurate calculation for my webbed plate I moved on to flooding and filtering. Unfortunately filters did not quite agree with the gooey arthrobacter(centrifuging it didn’t help either), which just meant I got to spend more time in the lab. Two other students and myself moved on to preparing our samples for DNA extraction.  Although I spent an extra large amount of time in the lab, it all payed off on Wednesday when all three of us were able to extract the DNA from our phages and verify its presence and purity.  🙂

I’m dating a Jonas Brother!

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Not really.

I thought I would describe my phage hunting like a girl who recently started dating a popular guy and brags about it to all her girlfriends.  Thank you, Bethany, for inspiring me to use music to help me blog.  Shout out to all my fellow former Jonas Brother fans – don’t be ashamed!  (The first line is from their song Video Girl, in case you were wondering the significance of that.)

 

“O! M! G!  Did you hear?  I’m dating a Phages Brother.  It’s soooo hot….

I’m dating Smeggy, the shy one.  We have bio lab together.  Of course, he’s not as popular as his brother, Arthur Phage, but he’s still a Phage Brother!  All the girls want them.

At first, I tried everything to get Arthur to like me; I cleaned his counter before he came to lab, I made sure he was nice and warm all the time, I even made his favorite bacteria food!  But he completely ignored me and was attracted to my lab partner who wrote cute notes to him every day.  I acted like I didn’t care but really, I wanted him all to myself.  I was so hung up.

Then, after a few more weeks, I heard that his brother Smeggy had noticed all the nice things I do and he thinks I’m cute!  So one day in lab, he introduced himself to me really shyly and politely.  Not like that arrogant, hard-to-get Arthur.  So we started hanging out in lab every day.  I could feel the chemistry.  After a week or so, he asked me to go out on date.  I was so flattered!  I couldn’t believe a Phage Brother would finally want to go out with me!

Our first date was so fun!  We went purifying!  Neither of us wanted to go home.  I wish that day could have lasted forever.  It’s okay though, because he asked me out on a second date!  I hope we go purifying again because I like taking it slow.  I want to go purifying at least three times before we take it to the next level in our relationship.

Yeah, so I guess you could say it’s pretty official.  Be jealous.”

Keep on Keepin’ on!

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After checking my first round of purification it was easy to see that the single type of plaque I picked was the VAST majority of the plaques found on my plate. Even on the first plaque assay it looked like the strength of the plaque was already there. The only thing I need to do is isolate and purify!

But now I have to be really careful that I pick the same type of plaque because the second most prominent plaque on the first assay was adopted! Which is really funny. I’ll get to see two of mine “grow up”!

Also on another note here was my first blog a that I didn’t post correctly so it didn’t show up on Bears in the SEA! Its a bit long but, I wrote about my experiences in the first few weeks of classes and my background in the sciences.

 

 

 

My high school had bio 1 for freshman, all other sciences classes were mostly chemistry/physics (and saying physics is pushing it). But our chemistry classes were insanely good. There were classes like marine biology and zoology… but those were taught by football coaches and compared to my Organic, inorganic, and AP chem classes, they might as well have been electives. But through the awesome chem teacher I had through all of those courses, I learned that chemistry can be pretty awesome. (Hints my bio-chem major! So far.)

So planning ahead is something I’m always doing, so with my dad having majored in biology (from Baylor!) and my mom in chemistry, they were the first ones to tell me bio-chem is crazy hard. Alright. So, if i’m going to pursue bio-chem I have to know I really like it. So I wasn’t sure how I was going to see that until I actually had a bio-chem course! (But honestly I wasn’t too worried, I mean its the first semester of freshman year..) Then came this class, I was probably most nervous about this class just because the main thing I remembered for Bio 1 was making a cell cake! (and the different organelles were different toppings.. it was fun.. and tasty..anyways..) So I knew bio was going to be my real first challenge of college. When the first few chapters kick in we were talking about basic chemistry I was relieved because that was my domain of knowledge! So off to a good start. Then lo-and-behold, the super super basics of bio chem come in! And honestly the first sign that I think told me i’m heading in the right direction is when were discussing (really anything) I know there’s another layer below it as far as what the actual changes in elements of the processes are doing! And that’s super cool! So, so far looks like bio-chem might be something I could put 25 hours a day studying if I really am interested in it! (Hahaha see what i did? I know there’s only 24 hours in a day.) But time, and much more knowledge, will tell!

So as far as the actual genomics lab goes, at first I felt the same way I did towards the bio class. I wasn’t really sure what I was getting myself into. But this past week I feel like was when the procedure and its purpose really clicked. While I knew what was going on earlier, now I feel like I could Email an old teacher about it and they would know what I was talking about! So i’m starting to really get into it a lot more now also because I truly understand what we’re trying to accomplish!

Round 4

Last week I did my fourth round of purification to verify that I only had one phage present in my sample. There weren’t many plaques to compare but we came to the conclusion that there was in fact a single phage, which gave me the all clear to continue on to the next step (flooding my plate). Last class I flooded my most webbed plate so today I will get to filter and do more dilutions! Hopefully there are still filters left…