S4 31: BRB

Be Right Back
This week, I didn't really see lab time because I have three midterms next week so I have been hiding away and studying. What I have focused on this week was gathering information on my Yeast 2 Hybrid project in preparation for the project backgrounds we have to write. This week has been pretty intense with the work load. I am trying to push through and keep telling myself that spring break is one week away. It didn't help that I thought last week was the last week before break but life goes on. I can't wait until these midterms are over and I can get back in the lab.

S4 30: Rough Day in the Lab

Rough Day in the Lab

Let's just say I am glad today is almost over. One of the things I hate the most is not remembering how to do something that I know I learned and should know how to do, especially if it is easy. It also made me question if I am cutout for research.
Basically, I needed to perform a few dilutions before I could get the right volume concentrations for my experiment. I started with my M1V1=M2V2 formula and got some tiny numbers that made me question the answers. After over an hour of trying to remember, getting frustrated, self-doubting, and venting about how much I don't think I'm cutout for research, I think got some maybe half correct calculations. I hope they are right. Today helped me realized that doing dilution calculations for chemistry homework doesn't really work the same in the lab.  I realized that sometimes you have to scale up, scale back down, and then scale up because the lab equipment doesn't measure smaller than 2uL on a micro-pipette.

S4 30: Trouble Shooting

Today in the lab, I focused on trying to do some trouble-shooting in order to extract the third and final plasmid to be sent for sequencing. My PI is thinking that there is possibly a mutation in this sample that is causing cells to produce its own LacZ and histindine. For this reason, we believe that this is why we were seeing blue cells when we performed the Xgal Assay awhile back. So, I am going to try two more transformation with different DNA concentrations to see if we get sufficient results this time. If not, we are going with the mutation idea and sending our other two samples for sequencing and calling it a day.

S4 29: Another Day in the Lab

Another Day in the Lab
I have to admit that one of my biggest struggles this past semester was keeping good research notes. I would typically find myself using my research notebook for mostly notes and it was challenging to keep everything in sections since we aren't suppose to skip pages. So last semester I thought by keeping notes and procedures on the google drive would solve my problem but it did not. I then began to struggle with having notes and procedures in multiple places and I found that the disorganization ultimately affected my productivity in the lab. When I sought guidance from my research mentor, she suggested a few resources I try out and supported my desire to have an electronic research notebook. I familiarized myself with Microsoft One-Note and I am so glad I did, because its design layout was exactly what I had in mind! I am now able to have the app on my phone too, and it really allows for me to be more time efficient in the lab and refer back to my notes easily. My favorite feature is being able to take a photo of lab procedures on my One-Note mobile app and also instantly automatically sync it to my computer. Then, I can quickly add notes directly onto my photo. I even started using one note for my classes this semester, and I definitely recommend everyone to try it out.