Sat July 3rd

Hey all!

I am home with the family this weekend. So great to see everyone and pet my puppy! When I am here, it is hard to imagine how I get along without them all. Keith is doing a great job as the single parent and everything seems to be going just fine.

Back at work, I had some frustrating days. Ben Rodriguez showed us a program called Oligo 6 that searches for primers - little bits of a DNA sequence that doesn't have a lot of CG combos, or repeats, and that occur on either side of an "interesting" area of DNA we would like to study. Of course, there are more things, like length, and what is the middle and all kinds of temp readings and stuff that you have to take into account. So - we are supposed to find some possible good primers, and they will order them and we will see if we can use them to duplicate the DNA. One problem - we don't have access to this program in the lab. We can try to find a pirated version to install on our own laptops (Phoenix is very good at finding those on Chinese websites), but even when I gave in to that, can't get the program to work right on my machine. When I can find primers, can't get the info to copy - so I will have a good possibility staring right at me on my screen, the program will freeze up, and I will have to shut it down and lose all my info. Same thing with problems with the open source R programming language - everyone else (Phoenix) is breezing along - my computer keeps telling me it can't open this package, or read this file - even with Phoenix sitting there typing on the keyboard to try to fake it out into not knowing that it is me that needs the information! This is not only on my laptop, but also on a school computer, whereas it works fine for Phoenix on both. So the computers are still allergic to my fingers on the keyboards, and I went home feeling pretty miserable.

BUT, the next day we worked back in the lab, and that is a much happier place for me. We took primers that have all ready been proven to work, and did PCR with COBRA testing- PCR is a long and exact method of combine a bunch of stuff into tiny test tubes, and then using a machine to heat them and cool them several times to get DNA to grow between the primers. And that was really neat. We use centrifuges and vortexers (spinners and shakers) and lots and lots of pipetting. Then we made a gel, and injected our resulting PCR material mixed with dye into small wells in the gel, and put it into a machine that pulls the dye one way and the DNA the other. Then off to a fancy UV photography machine that captures the information of how well the DNA performed at the different temperatures we set for the PCR. That is supposed to give us an answer about the best temperature to use for that particular primer. We will use this test again on new primers that they ordered to figure out what will work best. Then we move on and do other things with the primers - to be told to us next week. I am not sure if I like the lab work better because I really love it, or if it is because it is new to me, and I haven't had a history of getting frustrated on it like I have computers.

The fellow that is training us in the lab is named Joseph Lui. He is a very nice fellow - one of the few people I have worked with that is older than me! Of course, he is Asian, like 90% of the rest of the lab folks - he is from Taiwan.

Jacob came for a visit last week and it was great to have him with me. When you have a bunch of boys, you can have the problem of treating them as a group. It is when you get time with them one at a time that you really appreciate their individuality and personality. I enjoyed showing him around, but he thinks my job looks really boring, so I don't think I inspired a budding scientist. Of course, I was down in the computer lab the day he came in - not my favorite part of the job either. He says Ohio has better pizza than NC (specifically Donatos pizza), and I showed him the "Wonder Kroger" that has all kinds of departments inside, and several different kinds of orange soda he has never tried (orange soda is Jacob's favorite), and Easton Mall, which was really neat. We saw "A-Team" at the theater there and it was really good. Made some good memories - wish I had thought to take some pictures!!

Well, better get a move on my day. Keith had to go down to the church and play piano for the July 4th pancake breakfast this morning - I slept in to recover from my 4 am rising yesterday to go to the airport. I will be returning to Ohio Monday night to start up again on Tues.

Have a happy and safe 4th!

Leslie