Research Project Blog Assignment #2

Nitesh Chetry

2/24/2017

Biol& 212 AA

Research Project - Individual Blog Assignment #2 

      Looking at the data from the gels obtained in lab, one of the biggest surprises we encountered was how different the pig was to sheep and cow. We expected the sheep and the cow to be very similar to each other because of the similar digestive tracks, as explained in my Blog Assignment #1. Also, we expected the pig to be the next distant relative to the sheep and cow because of similar hooves. Instead the bear, a non-domesticated animal seemed to share more protein bands with the sheep and cow than the pig shared with the sheep and cow. This can be seen on both our gels, from the two separate lab days, so we know that this likely didn't occur due to an error. Overall, I was very surprised to see very small differences between the protein bands of all our animals.

     I am curious to know how to other groups dealt with the any denaturation or protein band streaks that would make it difficult to identify certain bands. For my group, we noticed small streaks in around the same spot for all of the animal proteins. We tried to improve this in our gel two by using 9.5 micro liters instead of 10 micro liters. However, the same problem occurred, and we found similar streaks in our second gel. I wonder if any groups, who observed streaking in their first gel, were able to make any significant changes that fixed the problem for their second gel. Also, I'm curious to see how common this small amount of streaking was overall, for all of the groups.