The confocal microscopy wasnt’ the blast I was hoping for. Not because 3D visualization using laser and fluourescence isn’t fun and impressive. But, mostly me having high hopes: Looking at living mammal cells. Manipulated proteins with different stains, interacting, colourful images… Oh well. Instead, we watched a dull image of some cells involved in the [...]
I’m attending a 3 week long course teaching different microscopy techniques. We are 8 people. Yesterday, I fell hopelessly in love. With their brand new scanning electron microscopy! I was kind of suspecting this to happen, having wanted to work on a SEM for along time, but I was really blown away. I definetly need [...]
“Småe partikla”, “øfto” og “stempelpompo”. Kromatografi blir dobbeltgøy med en foreleser som prater kav dialekt. “huggu”, “småe størrels”, “korsin ende”, “øfte” og “vaffal”. Men rent pedagogisk er det, for meg, kanskje ikke det mest gunstige. Jeg ender stort sett opp med å småhumre over alle disse utrykkene i stedet for å konsentrere meg om retensjonsparametre [...]
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
I’ve not been able to do much work in the lab lately. Mostly because I’m a Master of Procrastination(TM). But also because I’ve been working on finishing the practical part of a course I’m taking this semester, chromatography. We’re having three lab exercises, using three separation techniques. Ion exchange column, GC (with FID) and HPLC. [...]
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
I attended an open lecture/seminar today for employees and students, focusing on what is being done concerning ethics and code of conducts at the university. Dag Helland, from the University of Bergen, held the introductory, talking mostly about the responsibilities of being a co-author of a paper. All this in light of the infamous stem [...]
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Monday, February 27, 2006
You have probably heard the phrase functional food. In Norway, the government have quite strict rules of what modifications are allowed to food and beverage. I don’t know the details, but so far I’ve only seen orange juice with artificially added calcium, milk with vitamin D, yoghurt with the probiotic Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG (LGG), etc. [...]
Monday, February 27, 2006
That is, lack of successfull transformation. I got my colonies on the LB agar, and was happy, everything going on as planned. But, darn, something wasn’t right. Using restriction enzymes to cut the new plasmids, checking if my genes actually had been incorporated, showed … nothing. I’ve spent the last days trying to find out [...]
Monday, February 13, 2006
I’ve learned a lot these first weeks. And the feeling of being totally lost is gradually fading. Still, talking about green fingers, my head definitely feels green sometimes… Anway. I got the primers. I did PCR. I did gel electrophoresis, isolating the genes I multiplied. Today I started the transformation progress, using the Zero Blunt [...]
So. I’m installed in the lab. I’ve done my initial share of mixing up buffers and LB media for the E.coli bacteria (the ever-present lab workhorse). I’ve created a (tiny) stock of vectors (pRSET based), and should work out the primers for PCR amplifying the two chitin binding proteins I will work on. Trying not [...]
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
I had a meeting with my supervisor today. He gave me a “tour de labs”, and got me installed. Immediate plans involves setting up an array of useful buffers. I will also have to design primers for a couple of potentially interesting genes that codes for proteins involved in chitin degradation. When the constructs (vector [...]