Wed June 23rd

Yesterday we worked really hard in the lab. So far, we have cultured cells, watched them, and divided them. Monday we took the cells and dissolved them to get the DNA released, and then put them in test tubes. The ultimate goal is to make RNA out of the DNA, and then cDNA (complementary) out of that. We can use that to make lots of copies of the areas we are interested in, and use that to generate data to examine and measure. Yesterday we got a lot closer to our goal - we took the DNA and made RNA from it, and measured it for purity and amount of RNA. Then we treated it and incubated it to start making the RNA - almost there!

Then the leader of the program came over and told us that she has a different project she wants us to work on, so we will not even be doing anything with Michael anymore. Sigh - SO, new project, details to follow, I guess.

The classes with esoteric and mysterious titles have started. Statistical Phylogenetics ended up being a lot like genealogy, only with genes and viruses. You try to find a common ancestor in the terms of the arrangement of your A C G T on the strand, and identify where something mutates and forms a node - or the line branches off. Looking at different lines, you try to determine which are most similar, or made with the fewest changes in the original strand. You want to see how long it took to change, to hopefully predict when it will change in the future. Of course, this is done with lots and lots of lines of A C G T's that are all compared, one by one, by the computer. The project they are going to do to examine this, is to compare the genome of a bunch of different kinds of flightless birds - ostriches, kiwi, etc, that all live on different continents and see if they can figure out from the genome if that was one mutation that caused flightlessness, or if it happened several times in different places. I thought that sounded really interesting.
Yesterday we looked at Bioinformatics - which is basically analyzing biological data with a computer. He showed us different data bases that are available to go out and look at, that have genes and things mapped out.

Today's lecture is on Chemogenomics - and it is about to start.


Have a good day!

Leslie