Aaron Oberstadt

The majority of our group's problems match those of others in the class. We decided to repeat the fish protein lab with various mollusks. This proved to be difficult to exactly replicate in our second gel as the mussel samples had all died. Like Asmah mentioned, we had significant bubble production when transferring Laemelli buffer. Any major issues with bubbles or liquid that would not settle to the bottom of a tube, we found, could be solved with a centrifuge. Finally, on our second gel, a large number of our protein bands were extremely faint, which made reading it very difficult.

These issues, among others, will be addressed in our error analysis. Lacking a second sample of mussel is potentially a major cause of error in our final results, and we could not have prepared for that. We did not maintain consistency in who transferred the protein samples from their respective tubes to the polyacrylamide gel, which could be a source of error. The second gel ran for 5 minutes longer than the first gel, potentially explaining the faintness of its protein bands. Finally, our inability to measure bands that should exist but are too faint to accurately see can also contribute to error in our results.