Social
On Tuesday, I went to Batangas, more specifically a beach in Batangas, with some of the people from my lab. It was an awesome experience consisting of great food, some beach competitions, volleyball, a banana boat, and a really bad sunburn. It was nice talking to the whole lab in a more informal setting and just learning how many of them are at the point they are at now and where they are going. Friday though, the IRRI crew went to Manila. We stayed in a great hostel. I met two guys, one from Melbourne and the other from Manchester who have been traveling for a few months. It’s always awesome to meet people from all over and just chat, at least in my opinion. The Brit and the IRRI crew went out on Friday night to see what Manila nightlife was like and it was a very fun time. Saturday, we went to the Mall of Asia where my first stop was Shake Shack (as awesome as Filipino food is, it was nice to have some American comfort food). We walked around for a little bit and then headed back to the Hostel. It was a really fun weekend and a nice getaway from work.
Research
This week was an interesting one. I loaded my first 384 well PCR plate which left me with a very sore shoulder the next day. This may have been one of the most nerve-racking experiences because if my ample did not amplify that would be an 11-hour work day down the drain. An already tedious process was exacerbated by more wells, different pipetting techniques, different PCR mix volumes, and loading 4 gels at once. My favorite mistake was to load the DNA and forget to leave a space for the latter. The former became the latter in the procedure after I think the second time I made that mistake. The start of the week went great because I was able to validate 24 markers a day instead of 12. We had some trouble with one of the species not amplifying but we are fairly certain that’s due to not having a complimentary sequence to the marker instead of an experimental error. I am really starting to understand the inner workings of the reason for validation and how markers work as well. At first, I understood markers were primers but the exact correlation left me a bit confused. Now (after scoring the markers) I understand that the markers are within a specific gene where an InDel occurred (that part I knew) but, Only certain species possess this InDel causing that amplified product to be a different length. The InDel itself is only an identifier and not necessarily the most important mutation of a specific gene. That’s what I realized this week. The end of the week was a sad day. Everything went great, or so I thought, and then I went to check my gels for amplification. Nothing. Not one amplified. I finished the run at 3:30ish, showed my lab mates, sighed, laughed a little, and called it a day. Hopefully, it was the PCR products and my next PCR will amplify as normal, or else next week is going to be a week full of troubleshooting.
