Research Project Blog #2

My group's goal is to see how well the muscle proteins within bear, caribou, deer, elk, moose, and chicken legs differentiate from one another. Our hypothesis is that, while the proteins of all four species of the deer family will be fairly similar to each other, deer and elk will be most closely related to each other, and caribou and moose will be the closest related to each other as well. However, we found the surprising result of bears having very similar proteins in their muscle tissues as the other mammals! I suppose it's not TOO surprising, since bears are also mammals but the results are actually very identical. (see below) As a matter of fact, all the sampled animals have relatively similar proteins in their muscles, with chicken being the one who holds the most difference.

Lane components:

1. Empty
2. Kaleidoscope standard
3. Elk
4. Moose
5. Bear
6. Chicken leg
7. Caribou
8. Deer
9. Actin & Myosin standard
10. Empty

Figure 1. Result of the first gel electrophoresis.

Figure 2. Result of the second gel electrophoresis.

Due to this, we're faced with greater challenge of distinguishing the differences between each muscle tissue. The bands on the second gel are also smeared in many places, most likely due to too much muscle tissue in the sample or poor pipetting technique, making it even more difficult to read the results. There could also be contaminants on the razors that would interfere with our data, all of which will be discussed in the error analysis section of our project. I'd like to advise other groups to choose a variety of species for more interesting results, and to avoid cutting too much of the muscle tissues when preparing your samples for gel electrophoresis. Less is more!