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Team:Cambridge/Blog/Week 4
From 2011.igem.org
Week 4 : 18th of July to 24th of July
Monday
Impatient at the non-delivery of the squid, two team members approach a local seafood restaurant and with a stroke of luck come away with a large bag of what the chef assures us is the right genus. Miraculously we seem to have approached a chef with a working knowledge of cephalopod cladistics, for a marvellous reflective layer is seen in dissected tissue under a microscope.
The rest of the day passes in much less exciting fashion, with much of the nitty-gritty of research dealt with: primer-design, reagent-ordering and the steady onward plod of our software tool.
Tuesday
When extracting DNA from a sample it's usually the case that the end-product is not only colourless but microscopically small besides, and further work on the extract must be done with a kind of religious faith in its existence. The team are therefore rather pleased indeed when our squid DNA extraction yields a massive visible pellet!
Booking flights, accommodation and suchlike is taking more time than we'd thought. There are a few mutterings within the group that our [http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Coefficient_of_Inefficiency coefficient of inefficiency] (Parkinson 1959) is above the critical value!
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
