WISE Journal entry #10

Name: Leah Gerald

Entry: #10 (3/14/2012)

WISE Week: 5

Written on Date:4/3/2012

Mentor: Sagar


Today was a roughly slow day, because once again , there was nothing yet for me to get my hands on and "do" but rather a lot of watching to be done. Nate was working on making a control comparison of the DNA/RNA levels in a sample of some proteins they had been working with. To make this control, he first wanted to find out the concentration of plasmids (the shape DNA takes for bacteria. like a circle instead of the double helix) that is he needs to get an average concentration, which is 230/260. He tested them in the protein assay machine, and found out the amounts he needed of 3 different strands: one was the first part of the plasmid, then the second part, and then the full strand of the two together. This way he could see different areas of expression in the genes. after this, I watched as Sagar transfected the cells in the hood. He used the plasmids Nate had set up earlier to transfect the cells. Its hard for the plasmids to bind with the cancer cells, because plasmids take on a circular shape, and the cancers DNA is in the double-helix shape, but overtime it does bond and starts to express whatever genes were in the plasmids combined with its own. and with this, I had to leave, and my day was over