Bio Design
Week 2
This week we did Gel Electroporesis to cut the plasmid after we took it our of a cell.
Gel Electroporesis
Before I went to class I saw lots of videos on Gel Electroporesis and got some basic background
Plasmids
Plasmids are circular DNAs. Here are the ones we are using
Pipetting
We learnt to use pipettes and did a lot of pipetting based on the instructions
Labeling
I realized that labeling was a key part of the process especially when there are lots of steps involved!
Centrifuge
Among the various fancy equipments we saw, centrifuge was one of them. The most important thing is to keep your samples balanced!
Thermocycler
We also used a thermal cyclers for temperature-sensitive enzyme reactions, e.g. restriction enzyme digestion
Nanodrop spectrophotometer
We used a nanodrop spectrometer to measure the concentration of our pPSU1 and pPSU2 DNA preps
Bad graph
We initially saw a bad graph on the nanodrop spectrometer
Good concentration
Our other samples had better graphs/concentrations
Electroporesis Prep
We carefully prepared the tank for electroporesis
Electroporesis Imaging
We imaged the gels with a transilluminator and analyzed the banding patterns
Electroporesis Prep
We carefully prepared the tank for electroporesis
Final Bands
We were able to recreate the DNA ladder and analyzed the different bands for the differently cut plasmids