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Eric- Week 4: Happy Fourth of July

This week was my first without the other high school volunteers. I was excited to be working with my postdoc on more advanced techniques, including: qPCR, RNA purification, DNA purification, and subcloning. My fourth week was shorter because the lab gave me off two days for the Fourth of July. Liz told me to spend a few days on writing a protocol for my subcloning project (where I am making vector-plasmids have a modified gene inserted) and another protocol for my RNA purification. The other times during the week were based on me helping Liz with some of her experiments. She asked me to run a PCR and gel for a specific set of primers and her lncRNA, PACER. Liz told me that she never got bands from the PCR because the sequence is very hard for the primers to properly bind to, and there are many places where the experiment goes wrong. Luckily, out of the five mice I genotyped, two displayed the presence of the lncRNA. Liz was really happy because she wanted to be reassured that she had both KO mice and the WT mice.

In addition to getting the very difficult PCR to work, I started my RNA purification experiment, where I used 27 different samples from cells treated differently with high-density lipoproteins, low density lipoproteins, and lipopolysaccharide. The purpose of this experiment is for me to eventually use qPCR and determine if PACER is expressed differently when treated different ligands, specifically those involved in cardiovascular diseases.

The best thing I got to do with the lab this week was to go to the Penn Museum. One of the Research Associates, Damien, used to work at the museum and is kind of a history buff. He offered to show everyone the "secrets of the museum", although after the fact, there really are not that many surprises from the museum.

Hopefully everyone else has enjoyed their holiday, and are enjoying working in the other labs.
                Eric

Here are pictures of the museum:





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