27th May 2016 – Day 5

Last day of the week, cannot believe how quickly that went! There wasn’t too much left to do as Amy wants to leave the big stuff for next week and I am told we will be getting more help, this will definitely be useful always nice to have an extra pair of hands.

The flasks were removed from the overnight incubators, 1ml samples were taken from each. The samples were spun, the supernatant was removed and pellets were frozen (I will need this in a few weeks time). The samples I took yesterday as well as the ones I took today were prepared for another SDS-PAGE gel, they were added to 4x loading dye and pulled through a needle (this was to break open the cells). Gel (which I made on Tuesday and stored in the fridge) was prepared in the tank while the samples were heated at >90˚C for 5 minutes. 20ul of each sample was loaded onto the gel along with 10ul of marker (this is used to tell the size of each separated protein), this was the same process as Tuesday. The gel was stained and then left to de-stain over the 3 day weekend. We will have a look on Tuesday and see if it has worked.

I also used the chilled centrifuge to pellet the reaming cultures in the 50ml falcon tubes, the pellets were then frozen.

The chilled centrifuge: used to pellet the cultures (Clair the technician said it was older than me).

Hard to believe 1st week is finished, its been so exciting. I have loved every minute of getting to know everyone and learn where everything is, whilst getting a taster of what it would actually be like to work in a lab. I loved even loved the hard bits (just means I am being challenged).