Blog 5: 3/11/16

Hello Hello!

Although technically this week is spring break, I still came into TGen to crank through samples.

So far, the gels have been successful and I have been able to genotype a majority of my samples.

However, I have reached a bump in the road. This entire week, once I have taken the samples out of the PCR machine, it has been saying "Uniformity Failure Service Alpha Soon." Since my mentor is out of town, I researched a little bit on what exactly this means. The uniformity failure in the machine means the power requirements for heating the left and right halves of the sample block are uneven.
This can lead to overheating. So hopefully, by the time my mentor comes back, we will be able to find a solution to our PCR machine problem.

But on the bright side of things, the image below is from a gel I ran earlier this week.

This gel was successful for 9 out of 12 of the samples ran. Although it is slightly difficult to see, the bands on the bottom mean that the sample is Wild Type, the normal genes. The bands on the top is Mutant type, meaning it has the MECP2 mutation, characteristic of Rett Syndrome.

Once I finish running all of my samples and uploading them in an excel spreadsheet, I will be able to carry on to behavioral studies of the mice that do have the mutation.

So a lot of exciting stuff is going to happen in the following weeks!

Thank you for keeping yourself updated with me!

I can't wait to hear how the other SRPs are coming along as well :)

Pooja