heading south

[fountainheadsam]

So I am definitely going to Orlando for the summer. I'll be doing research at the University of Central Florida / National Center for Forensic Science, as both my required internship for the Forensic Science program at Marshall and as the lead-off for my thesis research. Yes, I'm doing a Masters thesis, even though it is not required. And as a

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[kosherpickle]

So I am definitely going to Orlando for the summer.

I'd give travel tips, but all I remember from Orlando is Disney World, Universal Studios, and Wet 'n Wild. Circa 1992.

Now we add 50ul of extraction buffer.

What is "ul"?

I am not behind on reading books, only on actually writing about them in here.

I haven't yet read the first book you posted about, but I have been reading books by George R. R. Martin, Tad Williams, and Robert Jordan. Definitely out of my normal pattern.

[fountainheadsam]

"ul" is a cheap way of writing micro-liter. it should actually have a greek letter (mu) there, but in quick typing, many people type "ul" rather than worrying about inserting a greek symbol.

[kosherpickle]

I thought it might have been "micro" (µ), but I wasn't sure. I'm also not sure how you measure out a µl of anything, since it's pretty freaking small.

[fountainheadsam]

there are pipetters that will bring up that small an amount of liquid.

pipettes!

i've worked with amounts as small as 0.5 ul, though an amount that small can't reliably be pipetted, even with the smallest pipetter i've seen (there may exist smaller ones). generally for dna analysis procedures, you're gonna be adding 1-5ul of dna template. for single reactions, you'll be using <20ul of any single reagent, although in most situations you will want to run more than one sample at once, so you can prepare a master mix (containing everything you need except the dna template, which has to vary from sample to sample) using larger volumes of everything, and then separate it out. larger volumes are generally better to work with (to a point), and you get more consistent reaction mixtures if you make up a mix and separate out rather than prepping each rxn individually.

so there's more than you really wanted to know about dna-related reactions.