Team:The University of Alberta/3 June 2008

Continued from yesterday... Yesterday, Jason made transformants using our working Blue Ox (used the primers, ligated the product into vector and transformed competent cells). The ligation didnt work well (or the transformation efficency was far too low), because we got only a single colony on the 400ul plate. Nevertheless, a single colony is all that is needed to set up an overday culture. The volunteers that come in this evening will have to do a miniprep on this culture, and then do a double digest with EcoRI and PstI to check to make sure the EcoRI site works. Part of the culture can also be used to set up an overnight so we can make glycerol stocks of our Blue Ox BioBrick (Jason already set up the O/N).

Today

Tom and Winnie prepared the crude and soluable proteins from the butanol biobricks (in both the constitutive and inducable vectors); they couldnt run them out on the gel though because we can't find the protein ladder. We need to email James about where it is (he's gone for a week or so).

We also set up a "gel station" on the third bench from the front in an attempt to make the lab a little more organized. If you're going to do a gel, do it on that bench, so we can keep all the gel and gel related items in one spot and hopefully the lab will be a bit cleaner. We may designate a "Mini-prep" station and a "transformation" station (heh, it rhymes). The back bench is our "plant prep. station".

We completed the first attempt at making our Mighty Agar Fist of Might (IMAGES COMING SOON). It turned out good for a first attempt. However, we have determined that a tin foil mould does not work well, because it leaves many indentations on the surface of the Mighty Agar Fist of Might. The next attempt will use a latex glove, though we have not figured out how to get the glove to stay in a fist shape.

Lab Tip of the Day
The lab's current motto is "If you spill it, you drink it." It is advised that you avoid spilling things.