Clover Powell SRP

Bonjour monde! I know my posts have been rather randomly placed in time, and I apologize for that.

Having said that, let me tell you what I plan to do this week.

This week, unfortunately, on the lab side of things, there's not much for me to do. My colleague Anne and my externam advisor Bianca are both "out of town" for the moment. Our first experience cutting the plasmid with the GFP genome and replacing the genome with that of the strawberry genome so that we would have the same plasmid did not work. The reason is because the sites where the restriction enzymes cut were not the same. The reason for this is that, instead of using the same restriction enzyme, Xba1 to cut both genomes from their respective plasmids, Anne used BamH1 and Xba1 to cut the plasmid with GFP and used solely Xba1 to cut the plasmid with the strawberry genome. The funny thing is that, when we did the gel to isolate the strawberry genome and the GFP plasmid without the GFP genome, apparentely, the strawberry plasmid and the strawberry genome hadn't even separated. Apparentely, the combination of BamH1 and Xba1 did not even cut the plasmid, so we couldn't even go through with trying to combine the strawberry genome into the GFP plasmid. Anne will be back in a week to help me go begin anew the process of cutting out plasmids apart and inserting the strawberry genome inside the GFP genome. Anne has ordered oligonucléotides, or in English, oligonucleotides. These moloeecules are short nucleic acid polymers, typically composed of fifty(at their largest) or less bases. what we will be doing is adding them in with the plasmids so that they have the same sites where the restriction enzymes will cut. This will allow us to cut the two plasmids with the same restriction enzymes and (if they even cut) will give us a higher chance that the strawberry genome will bind with the GFP plasmid. So, this whole process will happen next week, and hopefully this time it will work.
So, instead of doing the above mentioned activities, I will be working mainly on the development of the comic. This part is so exciting, and is also quite hard! As I outlined before, I am still thinking up of a stort, but I think that I've pretty much got the idea down.
Since I wrote in my SRP outline that I would be drawing a comic based on my experiences in the lab, that's exactly what I'll be doing. I don't want to make it a "straight from life to the page" kind of comic, though, so I've decided to explain what is happening on a molecular level in prokaryotic growth and cell division. To explain it in a fun and colorful manner, I've decided that I also would like to personify each important molecule (there are so many, and its very hard to choose) and use their role in cell growth and division to represent life in a village. I want to make the cell a village and outline the proteins and cell processes as proccesses that help the village "grow" and "survive". Its a relatively uncreative idea, but its a idea that I think I can transform into a fun and entertaining idea for the reading audience (Oh, and criticism is welcome!) Anyway, right now, I'm trying to learn as much as I can about prokaryotic cell replication, though, not much is known about the actual process. One difficulty is what to put into the story and what to leave out. What is too specific? I think that will depend on how long I decide to make this story and how much drawing and planning I'm gonna do. As soon as I am satisfied with my grip on the extent of knowledge known about prokaryotic cell division, I will really begin character development and storyboarding (though I have been doing these two activities a lot lately). Overall, it's been a scintillatingly exciting experience!
My experience in Paris these last three weeks have been really great. I have now a daily routine where I take the Metro 4 up to Les Halles station (which is next to the French version of a mall)
, then switch off to the RER B, a train that takes me all the way out to the town of Bagneux, where my lab is. At first, it was very unsettling, because there was always at least one person who was asking for money and help on the trains, and I knew I couldn't help them. Now I'm kinda used to it, so its not so bad. I haven't visited too much of Paris since I've been here, since my lab work eats up my afternoons, but this week, its finally sunny, so I will definitely hit the streets and see what's going on! Since my dad has left, I definitely feel free and liberated, but, as Josh so aptly said, everything haas been pretty much normal, and I haven't done anything really out of the ordinary.
Oh, and Greg, my lab doesn't provide me with a bed, but I am surrounded by the jewel of Europe: Paris. Think about it.

With that, I take my leave.

Bonne journée, mes amis!