7/20/07

7/19/07

Today, we did chromatography with various plants today- native AZ plants, yellow plants, purple plants in order to ascertain their pigments, absorption, and cholrophyll. Interestingly, we found out that raddichio was treated rather harshly and thus, has its white- bleached like color has no more chlorophyll. It was at this point that I started making connections with my previous studies on folivory and howler monkeys behavioral adaptations to a diet rich in mature leaves. It was a conversation that sparked and renewed my previous interest in my undergraduate honor's thesis that had me perform a comparative study on three primate folivores. We also found out that we could each take back 2 vials of GFP each!

7/18/07

Today, we earned the PSI crystals in the cold room yet again and found out that we had one vial of crystals from the seeding crystals that was large enough for x-ray diffraction. Dr. Fromme was quite impressed. We were also informed that our phyocyanin crystals were being measured and analyzed at Berkeley due to their clarity. Additionally, we placed our isolating GFP through a nickel column and allowed it to drip out as the truly isolated GFP. This took several hours even beyond our time there but in the end, we will be bringing back the GFP that will glow with a black light- a sure way of grabbing students attention! In Wachter's more bio-type lab, there is a lot of waiting which allowed us to go back and forth.

7/17/07

Again, worked on GFP and worked with copper sulfate and potassium chloride crystals. Also, took pictures and focused upon our powerpoint presentation as we are all anxious to make this very professional. We will be taking GFP home- relatively stable and will keep in fridge. Am very pleased with the group I am in- both the teachers and the researchers. GFP is not classroom transferrable but is applicable to future lectures in class as it applies protease inhibitors and various bio jargon I have used but never seen in use.

Two labs were going on in parallel this morning. Di worked with Jennifer and myself in creating GFP. Di had put modified e-coli bacteria in a test tube to be multiplied. Then we added it to a flask with a liter of broth. Every hour we checked the bacteria growth by seeing the 600nm absorbtion of a sample. The bacteia had been modified with a plasmid which contained DNA for GFP and an antibiotic resistance protein. The antibiotic resistance was used because an antibiotic was added to the broth to kill any bacteria that was not resistant. After 3 hours there was enough bacteria. GTDP was added, and the temperature reduced. This stopped the bacteria multipling and instead in started to produce GFP.

Meanwhile prof Fromme was running a inorganic crystal lab using copper sulphate.

Today's pics 7/16/07

7/16/07

Today I divided my time between Fromme's lab and Wachter's lab. In Wachter's lab, we are isolating GFP through the use of primers and a broth in E. coli with an antibiotic that the plasmid is resistant to. In Fromme's lab, we were trying to replicate experiments creating inorganic crystals using the materials that would be typical of a high school lab and Dr. Fromme commented on how much more difficult simple experiments then become. She showed us a particular catalog that would allow us to purchase better equipment- not lab quality- but certainly above rudimentary for our work creating copper sulfate crystals. We found out how to apply the terms saturated and supersaturated in the lab setting as well and will be meeting once again with Dr. Fromme at 2:30 PM to review our powerpoint thus far.