Good news of a sort

Last Friday I ran gel electrophoresis with a 0.5% agarose gel instead of the normal 1% gel. I did not get the results I had hoped for, but I did observe some travel in the gel!

In lane number 5 (from left), a very faint band can be seen about halfway down. I consulted with Matt and Josh, the leading thought is that something is working (the band though faint is still there), but not working well. It is believed the specific primers used are not effective. This is not a very big issue at all. There are seven different UPRs (Universal Rice Primers) currently available in the lab, four of which I have yet to use. Hopefully one of the other four will be able to amplify an SSR (Simple Sequence Repeats) in my Palo samples.

Now I need to conduct another DNA extraction from leaf samples, check it with gel electrophoresis, run a PCR with each of the four URPs, and another gel with each of the PCR results, analyze the results to see which, if any, is successful, and then apply the whole process to the each of the samples I collected... Oh wait... what's that? The semester is over next week?

given that, I have had to adapt my poster presentation and research paper to focus on the observable data collected. Hopefully next semester my participation in this program will be renewed and I will be able to continue with this research.