Week 9

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 (consciously) changed anything from last week, so I could not figure out what was wrong. That day, I also attended a seminar about determining thermoregulatory pathways (given by, I believe, Rohini Nott's mentor last year).

On Friday, I called Dr. Chang, who suggested I use new primers (an ingredient in PCR), as my last run had depleted the supply. I made a new solution and ran the PCR-- whether it worked remains to be seen on Monday.

All in all, this week was rather uneventful, even frustrating. But that's how science goes; here's hoping that I finish my project with a bang!

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