Team:The University of Alberta/20 June 2008

Today

 * Got the sequencing results back from the "Purple Russian Colony #5" sequencing that Winnie did. Looks like it didn't work at all (see the sequencing page). Sooo...
 * ...She is doing colony PCR on colonies taken from the streaked-out "Colony 5" plate using both the VF/VR primers and the gene-specific PF/PR2 primers; the former will show us the size of whatever insert is in the colonies, the latter will show a band if and only if the insert is Purple Russian (though this is really redundant, since it is Purple Russian beyond a reasonable doubt [ See colony PCR results below ]).
 * ...sequence the correct band so we can be doubly sure that the "Purple Russian Colony #5" plate really is what we think it is.
 * Last night the volunteers ran the colony PCR Jason did on Purple Russian Colony #5. The band was the right size (~700bp) so we are reasonably sure that this is what we want. (See image to the right).
 * Mike posted links (on Project page) to papers discussed in yesterday's meetings, and to sequences that have been ordered:

--Kanayama et al. discusses a E. coli based assay for nuclear receptor ligands [IMPORTANT! or at least useful]

--Zhang et al. discusses difficulty of expressing full length ER in E. coli

--Zuo et al. discusses a fusion protein that uses LBD of ER


 * We have also opted to use a mutator strain deficient in repair mechanisms to try and mutate purple russian in such a way that we will get purple expression.

Jason
 * Designed primers for the plant primers
 * Research into mutation protocols

XL1 - Red mannual http://www.stratagene.com/manuals/200129.pdf