Team:Cambridge/Blog/Week 7

Week 7 : 8th of August to 14th of August

Monday

PCR begins again on reflectin, and subsequently fails - on running our products on a gel, we get some truly weird results. Hmmm...

Tuesday

The team are truly getting stuck into the labwork by now, not least out of necessity (it's week 7 already!). As one may have noticed from the recent dearth, endless bacteria-plating and even-more- endless pipetting provide few interesting anecdotes - nevertheless we'll keep you posted on anything exciting going on, including any major breakthroughs in the labwork.

The day brings another failed PCR attempt. Faint hope glimmers however, since the large number of repeats of faulty experiments we're doing is making us quite a bit more proficient at the general thing.

Wednesday

After a day's solid slog, two team-members are surprised and rather pleased at 11:30PM to see bands in the right places on a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gel_electrophoresis gel] - we have reflectin (probably). The team are optimistic.

Thursday

Friday

The Cambridge Plant Sciences Department maintains the ancient and venerable practice of 'Beer Hour', in which one of the research groups acquires a keg of ale, and the department's scientists attempt to get through it in an evening. The iGEMers take this week's turn to organise and the evening turns out to be a success (of the highest order, since the beer is all drunk, but not too quickly).

In other news, one of our assembled reflectin constructs (his-tagged and over-expressed for in-vitro work) is succesfully implanted into E. coli. The three other constructs fa il, in the usual biological fashion, for murky and unknowable reasons.