Just to avoid speculations: this is from pixabay.com and does not depict me.
In one of my very first posts, I described a day in the microbiology lab which later spawned the idea of my first science challenge. But recently, I felt this kind of post might give you the wrong impression when it comes to working at the lab.
The past few weeks, I had several different lab practicals as a part of my education. Some were fun, some a bit less. The current one is the worst I’ve had in a while.
On Monday, everything was still alright. We started at 10 am which is comparably late, I had to be there at 8:30 am every other time. So I expected things to be very relaxed. I had no idea how “relaxed” they would be.
We were presented with several mutants of the plant A. thaliana. The task was to determine their genotype, that means to see if they’re heterozygous or homozygous for the mutated gene in question.
What does that mean?
You all know that for every gene you get one version from mom and one version from dad, right? If both mom and dad have blue eyes and they give you the blue-eye version of the eye color gene, you’re homozygous for blue eyes. If mom gives you blue eyes and dad gives you brown eyes, your heterozygous. There are two variations.
The same works for the plants we looked at: They either had the mutation only once (heterozygous) or twice (homozygous). Determining this characteristic is important for later experiments.
In theory, it’s not that hard. You cut off some leaves, mush them into a green soup, add some chemicals, do some repetitive stuff and BAM you have isolated DNA. That DNA is then used for a PCR (polymerase chain reaction). This process is used to make copies of the DNA you have so that one piece of DNA is converted into a lot more. Put some dye on it, load it onto a gel, energize that gel and wait for an hour or two.
You should get a picture similar to this:
This picture above is mine, but it’s not the one we got from analyzing the plants (this is from an experiment where we determined the color of mice whose DNA we had been given). Why am I not showing you the picture we got from the plants?
Because there is no damn picture.
The process described above took two days (because of how everything was organized, it could have been done in a day). And in the end, we got nothing. Why? Because someone apparently gave us chemicals that didn’t work like they were intended to.
Though luck.
Anyway, after that setback, I went back today, because we started a different experiment: Isolating RNA from the same plants.
RNA is similar to DNA, there are only slight structural and functional differences. And while DNA is usually found as a helix with two strands, RNA normally has only one strand and is thus a lot more fragile.
But hey, I had never done this before, it could be fun!
It wasn’t.
The supervisors had given us the wrong chemicals again.
What do we learn from that?
- Don’t rely on others, even if they’re supposed to be smarter/more experienced than you.
- If you can’t handle frustration, stay far, far, far away from a lab.
So long! See you later - when I come home from another day at the lab.
Sources:
My Brain
Pictures taken from pixabay.com unless stated otherwise
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