Mistakes and High Pressure
Fei Lian writes (hilariously):
So today in lab I made my first mistake: forgetting to centrifuge the bacteria before suspending them in lysis buffer. Oh no’s. Supposedly, the right way to mini-prep is to first centrifuge the tubes, then dump out the supernatant, then add in lysis buffer, and then resuspend. I just added in lysis…one step ahead of my game.Well, that took down my samples, so I’m gonna have to redo them all over again. But on a good note, our E coli friends were ready to be French Pressed today. In case you don’t know, a French Press is this high pressure thing that weighs about 20 lbs which squishes the cells until all the organelles and cell membranes explode and pop out. Sweet. And now…they’re in the high-speed (24,000rpm) centrifuge ready to be spun down. And I’m adding elution buffer to clean those tubes.Lab is fun, seriously.