Week 8 - Placement 1

This week Derek brought me straight to the lab to work with Carol again. Derek informed me that himself and Carol had looked at the results yesterday and saw that the results didn't turn out as well as planned. So for today I would do the same as what I did last week, however on a much smaller scale and only analyse 28 samples of DNA at a time.


Carol had taken out the DNA from the freezer already so I didn't need to wait for them to defrost. This week I preformed all of my work on ice to prevent any of the DNA and mix from evaporating from the dish. The very same as last week, I made sure that all of the samples were mixed properly by flicking them and spinning them on a centrifuge machine.  I then pipetted 2 micro-liters of DNA into 28 wells on the dish. Once I completed this I made up the master mix and then pipetted 2 micro-liters of it into each hole. After, I set up the geno-typing machine that would be used to analyse the DNA. While I waited for the machine to finish analysing the DNA I read some more tutorials about different discoveries made in the genetic field.


After lunch I looked at the results produced by the geno-typing machine. Afterwards, I took the next 28 samples and prepared them for geno-typing just as I did earlier. I then set up the machine again to analyse the DNA and Carol would show me the results next week.

Person peparing the DNA for geno-typing

Derek then explained to me how I would be working with Sinéad next week in the neuropsychology department. I would use the results that I came up with today and Sinéad would show me the next step after geno-typing the DNA. However, if it turned out that my results aren't as good as we had hoped, we will use an old sample template instead. I look forward to next week and discovering the next part of the process.