(Untitled)

[cougarfang]

So I have a lab in which I'm supposed to PCR DNA. As one of my professors characterized it at the beginning of the semester, "it's basically putting miniscule drops of clear liquid with more miniscule drops of clear liquid and hoping you get a good result

Comments

[rocza]

Use the duct tape on the back of the gel to boost its integrity/save the lanes.

;-)

[historychick49]

This is made of win!

[rayerai]

Oh, how I feel your pain.

Even better is the feeling that you have been thwarted by your good-intentioned TA. D'oh!

[cougarfang]

Worse, really, because I have no one to blame but myself. The TAs only hand out stuff and put ethidium bromide in the gel mix. I'm supposed to do everything else myself - mix PCR reagents and run them in the machine, make and load and run the gel... and then take picture of the results and cry myself a river. >_>;;;;; Over and over and over again. (In fact, I'm waiting for a gel to finish running as I type this up. Blargh.)

[cougarfang]

Ah, I just realized what you were referring to. I think. ^^;;;

To clarify: In my defense... (for inflicting such a terrible macro on you guys...) ... it was a terrible gel.

XD;;;

[mimesis]

hee. trouble-shooting PCR can be weeks of fun. :P

[kittenexploring]

Ah, so the problem was the annealing temperature, the denaturing temperature, the dilution, the primer concentration, the primer design, the enzyme, the buffer and contamination in the Trizol. Oh, and low concentrations of the mRNA target. And that it was never going to work well without spending money on fluoro tagged primers.

Did I mention the RT-PCR machine turned out to be broken?

Months of fun. Months.

[kittenexploring]

Well, about that time it was found that some of the mice in the colony weren't the strain they were meant to be. I was pretty sure my mice were what they were meant to be so that wasn't wrong.

[chemicalpilate]

Why's your gel all fuzzy?

[cougarfang]

Because I got shitty results. *sadface* The first ladder and one of the lanes got holes poked in them, the rest of it is just tons of just-plain-wrong results... it really is supposed to be beautiful bright single bands, and instead ... well. XD;;;
(I need a failboat icon for times like these. Srsly.)