Research Project Blog Assignment #2

One challenge my group encountered, was the amount of tissue used for our experiment. We had big chunks, and they weren't similar in size. This caused difficulty when we had tried to get the solutions out of the microtubes with the pipets, and also has caused difficulty with reading our gels due to smearing. Another challenge for my group, or at least for myself, was reading the gel. It was harder for me to determine which bands were real bands, and which were due to smearing. Also, the photograph that was measured from in my group was a little concerning, only because I wasn't sure if this was the best way for measurement. And lastly, my group had used sterile pipets to pipet for the solution, and I was unsure if we should have used a micro-pipetter or if we should have used the sterile pipets. The difficulty with using the sterile pipet was that if we hadn't obtained the correct amount of solution the first time that it would result in bubbles forming at the top of the solution. If this mistake had happened more than once, we needed to get more solution for our six samples. 

I have three types of questions: 

1. How did you guys determine the amount of tissue used for your samples? Did you weigh the tissue, or did you make sure to obtain smaller samples? 

2. When measuring your gel, how did you determine what was a band, and what wasn't a band? Did you guys agree as a group what bands were?

3. Did anyone have any trouble with bubbles from pipetting? How did you guys fix this solution, if you did have trouble?

 

For other groups, I would recommend making sure your samples are small, as suggested by the lab manual. This will result in fewer smears on your gel and will make it easier when trying to read the gels. I would also recommend coming up with a solution to determining bands, and for all to measure the gels to get the best estimates for your lab report/presentation/project. I would also recommend using a micro-pipetter, only because I remembered during our last lab that we did use a micro-pipetter for obtaining the solution and this results in little to no bubbles.