Determining the Dependence of Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptor Expression on Opioid Receptors

This week marked the conclusion of my Senior Project and thus my time at BNI. In retrospect, Week 1 seems like an eternity ago, but the project itself went by unbelievably quickly. My hypothesis about the primers was correct, as I ran a gel on Friday's PCR products and finally found success on Monday, which meant I could resume the transcription process. On Tuesday, I did exactly that and also attended a seminar about ongoing research in spinocerebellar ataxia type 1 (SCA1). On Wednesday, I ran a gel to verify the RNA products of the transcription process, but still didn't get anything beyond the one type last week (of four desired types). If I had more time, I would definitely try again next week. Lastly, I spent Friday training and instructing another high school student who will be conducting research in Dr. Chang's lab over the summer. All in all, the entire experience was fantastic and a worthwhile exposure to research. If you want to hear more of my thoughts

Welcome to the (probably) penultimate week of my project! This one was tough, as I barely made any progress and my mentor was out of town. On Monday, I completed the last steps of the RNA purification process for the four samples I was trying to obtain. This was, however, my first time performing the entire procedure from start to finish. That might explain why, on Tuesday, the gel results were disappointing, to say the least. Only one out of the four RNA sequences was verified, so I had to redo the procedure for the other three. That day, I attended a conference about using a noninvasive electrical headband for performance enhancement (sounds like sci-fi, doesn't it?). On Thursday, I started to do exactly that-- but I hit a snag. The gel after the very first PCR (performed just to "check" that the process is on track) failed. This was extremely strange, as I had already done this step successfully in the past. I did it again-- still nothing. I hadn't (cons

Hey, everyone! This week, I got to utilize some interesting software in addition to the biotechnology in the lab. I spent Monday finishing up the FastCloning protocol for two final DNA sequences and sending them to the sequencing lab. In addition, I re-measured the concentrations of the DNA I had been trying to convert to RNA (using a spectrophotometer)-- it turns out my initial measurements had been way off, which might have been causing the issue. I also learned how to use a DNA chromatograph viewer called Chromas, which is how we manually "fill in" any bases that the sequencing machine fails to recognize. The various peaks indicate different bases, or "letters" of DNA On Tuesday, I reran the now accurately measured DNA samples through the PCR machine and found success when I ran a gel afterwards. Unfortunately, as luck would have it, just one of the samples failed-- the second one from the top, which has two distinct bands instead of one.  Fi