Another day in the Lab :D

12/12/11
Today I was not only given another chance to 'perfect' ('form' may be a better word) my pipet skills, but also to do some aliquoting. An aliquot is basically a fraction of a whole, which in the research lab means taking a test tube of DNA and then sucking up a small amounts and plopping it in another test tube to give to another scientist for their research. I am embarrassed to admit that this seemingly simple act took up the full time of my internship. The task seemed simple: transfer 30 microliters of 30 different samples of spruce grouse DNA into 30 little plastic test tubes. Obviously, I still need to work on pipeting efficiently, but more importantly, I need a little practice writing in size 3 font legibly. My handwriting may be small, but small AND neat is a different story :). However, it was nice to get some more pipet practice in, and, from a big picture point of view, the whole process of extracting DNA is basically just moving liquids which I will hopefully be a master at by the end of the year. While before I determined being a pipet 'master' to simply understanding how to use a pipet, that definition has evolved to not only being able to use a pipet, but do so perhaps a little faster than a snail's pace. Besides my aliquoting experience, there is also some exciting news. Dr. Kirchman was able to run the filtered DNA through the gel I made last week, and while there were not the nice blocks of DNA that are found in good samples of DNA, there were stripy bands of DNA running through the gel. Dr. Kirchman cut these stripy bands out of the gel and ran the DNA contained in those bands again and to our delight, there were nice blocks of DNA in a couple of the test tubes. This means that we can continue the rail project in full force once the Winter Break is over.