Lab work on top of lab work (Legionella pneumophila Blog Week 10)

This week feels like we've been in the lab non-stop.  Tuesday our team finished filtrating 3 samples that we had not been able to filter last week because we ran out of autoclaved vacuum filtration glassware. Once we finished filtrating our samples we began DNA extraction from the filtered samples.  The only problem we had was that we were not using the usual DNA extraction kit that we had been using.  Instead we used a kit by Omega bio-tek. This kit used a pretty extensive protocol (roughly 30 steps) and it took our group a while to work through the extraction.  Wednesday we worked on our poster fine tuning what we think was wrong with it. I will post it here and would love to hear any feedback you guys may have on the poster.  Today also ran four Agarose Gels with the PCR product from our last PCR procedure in order to see if ASU's DNA Lab will be able to sequence these bands once we extract them.  We have our fingers crossed since we would really love to know through genomic sequencing that we found L. pneumophila in these samples.

Oh the Stress (Legionella pneumophila Blog Week 9)

Oh the stress, this week was pretty rough.  We had to get a great deal of work done in the lab plus we had to re-run gels and re-do some PCR on the samples we gathered because the sequencing lab at ASU was not able to sequence the samples that we extracted from the Agarose gels.  On Friday we also re-collected 8 samples in order to analyze them and see if they would test the same nearly a year later.

Despite the fact that we have had these setbacks I think that it has been a great learning week.  We got a chance to know what it is like to try to find results with an impending deadline (the Estrella Conference) looming over our heads.

Almost Through An Entire Cycle (Legionella pneumophila Blog Week 8)

I view our work in the detection of Legionella p. as a cycle.  First we must collect the samples, then we have to filter out the DNA, next is the extraction of the genetic material.  Once the genetic material is out, we amplify the DNA we want through PCR with primers specific to a gene in Legionella p. Once amplified we perform electrophoresis with a positive control and a molecular weight marker to screen for our suspect.  After all of this has been done we finally cut out the genetic material out of the gel, extract it and send it off for genomic sequencing at ASU. Then we start with gathering samples all over again.  This week we are supposed to send 4 of our samples off to ASU to get tested to see if we can absolutely identify the bacteria.  I can not wait to drop off our samples and see what we get.  Getting those results back would finally complete a cycle of research!

I'll post a picture of our group at ASU tomorrow when we go!
So here is the picture of the lab, I didn't want to take pictures of people so I tried to avoid them and this is all I could get.  

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