The Beginning

Hello everyone! I cannot even explain how excited I am to be back at SEED and continue to work with everyone I did last year! Last year my project was on learning molecular biological and biochemical techniques in investigating periplasmic nitrate reductase A. I mainly learned about PCR, gel electrophoresis, and how to grow bacteria. This year is a continuation of that project, except I will actually be able to handle the protein. I have mainly been reviewing  the progress that they made over the year. This is exciting to me because I get to read Sammy's thesis, which has pictures of the gels that I helped him with! Today we are actually going to lysate cells! I also learned about a new technique called IMAC, which allows proteins with an affintity for metal ions to be retained in a column containing immobilized metal ions for the purification of histidine containing proteins. I believe this allows us to get rid of the polyhistidine-tag. So far this year everything is going well. Hopefully it continues to go this well.