Time always flies when you're having fun! And for me the end of my summer placement in the Hoskisson Lab has come!
In this final week, I had once again good news! Two more InhA mutants verified by sequencing, hence I spent my last days over-expressing them!
But also I had to make sure that there are glycerol stocks in the lab database of all my strains, enough plasmid in the freezer for transformations and "some" pellets of over-expressed E.coli with InhA...
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| -80 C Stock: E.coli BL-21 with InhA WT and mutants |
So what did I manage to do in the last 8 weeks?
I got 5 InhA mutants, 76 over-expressions thereof and wt InhA, many attempts of purification, with some frustrating moments not getting anything or realising it has precipitated, some happy moments having pure fractions, then again trying to concentrate my protein resulting in precipitation and then finally having it in solution at a concentration that even the physicists are happy with; ran many gels, made gallons of LB broth, got an insight into Biophysics doing my own FTIR spectra.................and much more.
Overall, I learnt a lot!! Most of all, next to all the all-day lab skills and protocols et cetera, to have a little more faith in my skills and dealing with the roller-coaster of frustration when things don't work out and Eureka moments when they finally do!
I had an amazing summer doing this project, it was such an invaluable experience and I cannot wait to be back in the lab for my dissertation project next semester; it has also helped finalise my decision to apply for a PhD now!
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| My last Day: (left to right) Jana Hiltner, Vartul Sangal, Myself, Paul Hoskisson |
I would like to thank everyone in the HW601 lab in SIPBS for their help and advise, esp. Kirsty Robb for helping me purify my protein, Jana Hiltner, Danny Shaw, Vartul Sangal and Paul for the great supervision and taking me on as a summer student.
And of course, the Biochemical Society for funding me!
Thanks everyone for reading my blog, I hope it was a little entertaining and also encouraged some students to apply for their own summer project next year.
I will now enjoy my last weeks of holiday in Germany before heading into my final year at Strathclyde!
Tschüs,
Beatrice
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