Week 3
Week 3... Halfway done...
More of the same this week, with the exception that my work actually related to the presentationI'll be giving at the Symposium. The big thing this week was doing a pair of experiments from front to back (meaning all the way from Tissue Culture to Membrane Treatment) at the same time. Though it actually ended up being more like 1 1/2 experiments.
The first experiment went well, and the data was what we were expecting (maybe "hoping" is a better word...) and our second treatment designed to check for accuracy of the other treatment came back with excellent results. We even got to messing with the standard procedures a bit due to how well it was going. The second one, however, taught me the pains of research... the hard way.
The Tissue Culture, in which we treated several plates of LNCaP (Prostate Cancer) cells went well, and we let them incubate for several days. The lysing and collecting the lysates went well. The gel setting, loading and electrophoresis went by without incident. Then came the western blot. I loaded the clamp backwards, meaning that I put the gel on the wrong side of the membrane. Such a simple, stupid mistake messed up and entire day's work.
And then, it gets even better: I tried the experiment again the next day, and got through it without incident, except for one little problem. We didn't have enough sample to actually do the entire experiment. So our results were muddy, unclear and didn't help at all. Well, at least I won't be making that mistake again, and as Dr. Kridel says, "worse things have happened in the world." I just have to do the experiment again next week.
All in all a pretty good week, despite that small problem at the end.
More of the same this week, with the exception that my work actually related to the presentationI'll be giving at the Symposium. The big thing this week was doing a pair of experiments from front to back (meaning all the way from Tissue Culture to Membrane Treatment) at the same time. Though it actually ended up being more like 1 1/2 experiments.
The first experiment went well, and the data was what we were expecting (maybe "hoping" is a better word...) and our second treatment designed to check for accuracy of the other treatment came back with excellent results. We even got to messing with the standard procedures a bit due to how well it was going. The second one, however, taught me the pains of research... the hard way.
The Tissue Culture, in which we treated several plates of LNCaP (Prostate Cancer) cells went well, and we let them incubate for several days. The lysing and collecting the lysates went well. The gel setting, loading and electrophoresis went by without incident. Then came the western blot. I loaded the clamp backwards, meaning that I put the gel on the wrong side of the membrane. Such a simple, stupid mistake messed up and entire day's work.
And then, it gets even better: I tried the experiment again the next day, and got through it without incident, except for one little problem. We didn't have enough sample to actually do the entire experiment. So our results were muddy, unclear and didn't help at all. Well, at least I won't be making that mistake again, and as Dr. Kridel says, "worse things have happened in the world." I just have to do the experiment again next week.
All in all a pretty good week, despite that small problem at the end.
posted by Brian at 7/01/2005 07:25:00 AM
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