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I've been posting these as bulletins, and I'll still keep doing that, but I also want to have a more permanent place on my profile. So, I'm going to copy and paste the bulletins I make into this blog post as a record of sorts.
2/6/2024: Gel Electrophoresis
What we did in the lab today! We're testing the amount of base pairs in the DNA that we produced doing PCR. We're going to use them to make biosensors :)
2/13/2024: Today in Lab
another lab update! so basically weve done PCR to replicate the base DNA plasmid stuff we need (if you're more curious you can lmk but that's basics), then we did PCR purification to isolate just the DNA and nothing else. In our lab though we all got the wrong number of base pairs in our DNA so we had to do gel extraction which essentially is just cutting the DNA we want out of the gel electrophoresis we did (see previous bulletin) and purifying it from there. However when you do that you don't get the most pure samples :P. Today, we still went ahead and looked at the concentration of the DNA that we got and my group got the highest (which is good)! We got 23.4 nanograms per microliter and the goal was 15-20. Other groups didn't get enough, or their samples weren't as pure as ours so 4 other groups also used our DNA for the next part. We took some of the DNA we got and combined it with the DNA of our fluorescent protein and E. coli cells in order to make a biosensor. I'll probably update on how it works out but I'm not so sure since my lab partners sort of might've messed up on keeping the temperature right.
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NiKOLAi SP♤DE
I saw it said you're making biosensors, what does that mean? what do you use them for? and if you don't mind me asking what is PCR? this all looks very interesting I just am not a science person and am slightly confused... lol
so biosensors are a pretty wide topic but i can explain what were using it for :P. were making fluorescent biosensors to help us know when bacteria start releasing toxins, the stage called pathogenesis. the bacteria have two layers of protection (basically their version of "skin") and in between those two layers is where the toxins go to be stabilized so they wont like fall apart lol. those toxins include an amino acid called cysteine which has sulfur in it. when there's more than one cysteine in the toxin, those sulfurs bond together to form a disulfide bond. these bonds limit the folding and thus stabilize the protein. if we can detect when disulfide bonds start forming, then we know when pathogenesis starts. our biosensor will settle in between these two layers and be able to detect those disulfide bonds. it will glow when there are no disulfide bonds, but also depending on the amount it will glow more or less. Hopefully that explains it well enough!
PCR stands for polymerase chain reaction. Basically it reproduces DNA an exponential amount so we can have a higher concentration of it :). its how they tested for COVID to see if there was any COVID RNA among your DNA
by Simp; ; Report
woah that's acually so cool! I love sci-fi movies with the cool testing labs so I think this is all really interesting (even more interesting since it's actual real stuff) I can't comprehend how ppl are actually able to do all this and come up with this stuff, it's just amazing to me
by NiKOLAi SP♤DE; ; Report
honestly yeah its so crazy someone thought all this stuff up like when i try to describe it to people it sounds so crazy to me
by Simp; ; Report