Result!

So, I haven't posted in a while, but for good reason! We had a week off working in the lab due to Northern Irish July holidays, but since then we have been working non-stop to get results - which at last we have!

We encountered a number of problems with out project recently. Our transformations were taking a long time to grow so we had to make up a new batch of competent cells to try and fix this problem. Also, our Western blots didn't seem to be working very well so we have moved back to the old method (i.e. not Snap id) for the time being until we can work out what that problem was. This method has been working well, but we just can't suss what went so wrong overwise.

But that's the bad news. The good news is that we got a new recruit - a high school student, Peter, and some good results! He has his own membrane protein to overexpress, and we both managed to get quite a lot of protein visible on the Western blots :) Unfortunately, I am running out of time in my project to try and purify my already difficult protein, so I am going to be helping Peter with his water-soluble protein for the rest of my time here in order to get experience with successful purification. The poor Masters student has had no joy with her original protein, and if after a few more experiments with E.Coli there is no protein she will be working with yeast. It just proves how unpredictable and difficult Biology research can be.

The next week will be a mad rush of trying to get the original protein overexpressed and purify Peter's protein in hopefully mg amounts! I can't believe I'm already near the end of my time here, not sure how I will cope without flasks of E. Coli in my life.

Robyn