What would happen if I drank a whole flask of LB broth? Is it weird that I’ve always wanted to try eating the DNA and protein gels and drinking the bacterial cultures? Maybe it’s because the gels remind me of jelly, especially when they have been dyed blue. Also, the name “broth” just makes me think about winter stews and warm soups. Yummy! Hot LB broth for dinner and blue protein jelly for pudding! However, the gels do smell a bit like vinegar after de-staining. Savoury jelly with salt and vinegar… It’s starting to sound like a bad idea.
Enough of my insanities and back onto proper science! It seems that we have a little contamination. Unfortunately, even though we purified the protein using flow chromatography, other bands of protein were found along with our desired protein band on the SDS-PAGE gel. We decided to do some secondary purification, but still got some contamination! Consequently, we started again from the transformation stage and purified some more protein. This time the experiment has been successful and, although there is still a trace of contamination, we have managed to gain some pure protein. That means we are ready to start NMR!!
Soon, I may be able to visualise the structure of the protein we have spent so long to create! In the mean time, I have been set a new task! Instead of neuroscience, the subject of my new project is cancer. I’m actually quite excited about this because oncology is an area I am extremely fascinated by and consequently something I’d be interested in continuing.
I’ll post the pictures of my yummy gels soon!
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