Research Project Blog #2

Name: YU CHIEH LIN

   In both labs, we did shrimp, mussel, scallop, octopus and clam for the muscle protein research project so did Marisa’s group, we found out that it was clever of them to use the method of taking the average of measurements from each member. This can increase the accuracy of the comparison of protein weight from species. The results of the gel in the first lab turned out pretty clear, it’s easy to see each band was completely separated, which helped us to estimate each band’s migrated distances. However, the challenges that our group encounter was in the second lab, the gel were pretty stained and blurry to see where bands stood at. We assume that the error of this was from the very first step in the procedure, which was cutting the muscles from the given samples. We took Gwen’s advise to measure the weight of the each samples that we cut off, because the size of the muscles we cut off affects the clearness of band shown in the gel. According to Dene’s record of the weight of the each samples in the second lab, the clam was 0.1 grams more than the average weight, and the mussel was 0.1 grams lesser than the average weight. From the lane of mussel and lane of clam, we knew that the more sample we insert to get the proteins, the more fainted bands we will get in the gel.  However, we cannot compared this error analysis with the the first lab, since we only recorded the weight of samples in the second lab. In addition, in the second lab, there were no live mussel for us to use as we did in the first lab. So, we used the dead mussel from the material counter, and we cut off the foot muscle instead of the missing adductor muscle. We suppose the results of mussel among the first lab and the second lab will be slightly different by showing a variety of proteins since we were using adductor muscle of mussel in the first lab.

Question: What is the factor do you think that differ the result of dead mussel and live mussel?