Goodness! I've been busy! Here's a post I started quite awhile ago, so the time line is all off (for example, my first trip up to UVM was more like five weeks ago, not three). I promise I'll write a bit more sometime soon...
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Well, first off, my trip to UVM nearly three weeks ago. I spent the Tuesday of that week extracting DNA from a fungus I thought was G. destrctans. It took most of a morning, and when I went to read the final DNA concentration, it was fairly low. You really don't need much DNA to run the PCR reaction on, so T and I agreed that I probably had enough, and that I should try running the PCR up at the Vermont Genetics Network, since it had failed to work so many times in the lab in Marlboro. Luckily, I needed to drive up to Burlington that coming Thursday (for car shuffling), so I got in touch with the guys at VGN and they graciously offered to help me out when I got up there.
When I arrived at UVM (a wee bit late, I always forget how long the drive takes), the first thing we decided to do was to test my sample using the nanodrop. The nanodrop is a cool little machine that takes a very tiny drop of your sample and tests it's absorbency at a bunch of different wavelengths, very similar to the spectrophotometer here in Marlboro, but on a tiny scale. The results from this showed that I really didn't have any DNA, and we decided it wouldn't be worth the resources to try and run PCR on the sample. Instead, they suggested I come up the next week with my agar plates of fungus and we do the DNA extraction and the PCR in their lab.
This would have all worked out nicely, except we had a major snow storm the next week, and instead of driving to Burlington, I hung around Marlboro and dug myself out, then went and helped my parents dig themselves out. And, of course, rescheduled my visit to Burlington for the next week!
This past Wednesday, I finally made it up to Burlington, with fungus, DNA extraction reagents, PCR primers, and PCR reagents in tow!
(to be continued some other day when I have more time)
