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Team:UChicago/Notebook
From 2014.igem.org
You should make use of the calendar feature on the wiki and start a lab notebook. This may be looked at by the judges to see how your work progressed throughout the summer. It is a very useful organizational tool as well.
This needs to get split up into separate pages somehow
Contents |
Week 1 6/16 - 6/20
Week 1 summary
Monday
First day of lab! We plated some DH5-alpha competent cells in preparation for gDNA extraction for our PCRs and future transformations. One person showed up (Kevin yayyyyy), then left.
- picture of Kevin here*
Tuesday
We attempted to make LB plates. We had fun watching it boiling over since we left it in the hot plate too long and it spilled everywhere. We did clean-up time afterwards! In the future, we will remember to to heat for only 1 min to dissolve everything except agar. Agar will dissolve during autoclave because science is cool. So exciting! :D We then remade the LB for funsies :D We did a few other things to start things up like making SOB, CCMB80 competent cell buffer, and antibiotic plates.
Wednesday
MOAR BUFFERS! Qiagen buffers are expensive so we spent the day making bootleg Qiagen miniprep buffers (sorry Qiagen, you had your chance). Then, we contemplated life for the rest of the day. *take depressing pictures here*
- take pictures of buffers*
Thursday
Made competent cells. Stuck hands in liquid nitrogen. Burnt our hands off (no pics because you need hands to use a camera, duh). EVEN MOAR BUFFERS We also went to a biotech company exhibit and grabbed a lot of free samples! (and food of course) We also extracted gDNA from DH5a to PCR out our mutator genes. We also learned not to use the free 1.5mL centrifuge tubes from last year, and to not smell our microcentrifuge anymore. Stock strains MG1655 and delta-tyrR came in from the Yale E Coli Stock Center. Yay! So exciting! Kevin was so excited that he burnt his hair trying to plate them. XD
We made competent cells (MY CRYSTAL BALL SAYS: THEY WILL FAIL). Kevin BS’d the gDNA and got some somehow but also made the centrifuge stink like chloroform/phenol. Fun XD
This company (name concealed) gave us some cool centrifuge tubes last year that warp when we spin them down. XD So we’re buying new ones. $$$ They’re wrong- money DOES grows on trees! AND we have lots of trees around here! Even better! We ran overnight PCRs, one with more and one with less cycles.
Friday
PCR-ed out 9/12 mutators. The lengths of almost all of them were verified to be correct!!! So much happy!!! Yes!!!! Yay!!!! The PCR with less cycles (bottom half of the gel) worked better so we’ll stick with that in the future. We also digested backbones that have the RBS we will use and ligate to all the mutators. What a good day!
