Look for the Mutant

For those of you who read my blog yesterday and were expecting me to talk about what I learned about HIV today, I am sorry to disappoint you. Unfortunately, there will be no interesting facts about HIV available today. Apparently, I misunderstood during lecture yesterday, and while the HIV topic will be in the very near future, it was not going to be today.

Outside of the center

This morning, we went to the PCR facility, a mini field trip for us. It was mini because it was just a five minute walk from our usual building to the Knapp Center, which was where the PCR facility was located, a lot closer than I had expected.

The people there were really nice and friendly. They introduced us to the machineries, explained to us their roles in the facility, and invited us to participate in what they usually do. We all helped to line the gels and pick up samples of bacteria from TSA plates to transfer onto the gel. I also volunteered to try my hand at balancing the samples in the centrifuge, which was a fun experience because I had to add plastic weights on the side without the sample to make it balance with the side with the sample (centrifuge has to be balanced in order to work properly). It was a lot of adding on weights and then taking them off and then adding other ones to get close enough to the weight of the other side. I enjoyed the experience immensely.

Since it was a lab facility, I was going to find a chance to ask if it was okay for me to take pictures inside; unfortunately, I forgot to, hence the lack of photos.

After our mini field trip, we went to lab, where we began a new experiment dealing with bacteria and bacteriophages, which are viruses that infect bacteria. For our bacteria, we worked with E. coli again, and we covered three plates with different dilutions of bacteriophages – one of those plates we added antibodies as well – to observe the number of deaths for E. coli on the different plates tomorrow. Hopefully, the only plate we inserted the antibodies in will be the one with the least amount of deaths, compared to the other two plates without antibodies, because having a lower amount of deaths would mean that the antibodies was effective against the bacteriophages. It would reassurance us too, since we also depend on antibodies to protect us against virus.

Lab materials

After lunch, we went to lecture. Today’s lecture was continuing with information about our immune response and the immune system, going into great technical details on both of those topics. Soon, though, we returned to the lab to do our DNA sequencing from yesterday’s sample with the mutant, rifampicin-resistant bacteria from the PCR. The results from the PCR gave us the genetic code of the sequence we were looking for, and using a software called Sequencher, we were able to compare the mutant DNA with the reference, normal DNA provided to us so we can locate the mutation for rifampicin resistance.

The actual process itself was not complicated, but the program itself was tricky to maneuver. Even though we worked until the end of class on this lab, no one was able to finish and most of us were still somewhat struggling with the program software. We will be continuing the lab tomorrow.

After class, I began the first stage of writing for my research project. I found some interesting articles talking about connections between dengue and Zika, which seemed pretty interesting, but it was also a lot of work, so I was slightly stressed.

To take a break, at 6 PM, I went down to the gym. I couldn’t stay as long as usual, however, because I still needed to go to the dinner hall to grab dinner. After dinner, I showered, and it was back to work again. I stayed in Kara and Olivia’s room to work, and I accidentally locked Kara out. It was all good, though, because we resolved that pretty quickly. I continued my work in their room and eventually started on my blog. 

Once I finished blogging, I think I will review the notes I took in class today a little more before I finally go to bed. I'm more than ready for Friday to come!