And the time starts ticking away...

Firstly, I would like to apologize for the lack of a post on Firday. It was very crazy, and I did a lot of work before I had to catch my train, so it was very much a last minute affair. Again, apologies!

Bonjour, mes amis! Back from Marseille, and I can tell you I had really a blast! From going to cultural music concerts and staying up dancing until 3 in the morning, hanging out and eating fresh grilled fish at a friend's housewarming party, and biking 20 miles along the beach, I couldn't have asked for a more picturesque setting and fun time. Well, I did get no more than 18 hours of sleep in the three days I was there, but who needs sleep when there is music to hear, places to see, and people to meet? I don't, that's for sure!

So, as I wrote in my last post, I had grown several different types of bacteria, some with the GFP genome and some with the Strawberry genome. In fact, we were supposed to grow two types of bacteria, one called wild type and the other called Delta-dna. We would then have a GFP Delta-Dna strain and a Strawberry Delta-Dna strain, and a wild type with either GFP and Strawberry. There was a small mix-up, and we ended up not having wild type GFP. I ended rushing around on Friday to resuspend some of the culture we had made earlier on Agar plates. But, Bianca had read this article that had done pretty much the same thing as what we are planning to do! What they did is mixed the bacteria in the sma solution, then put a dot on some Agar plates, and let them gorw for up to 84 hours. What I saw was astounding to say the least! The bacteria had grown and formed some sorts of patterns on the plates. The combination of red and green was not only pleasing to look at, but the sort of patterns that they made were also quite amazing and artful. So, of course, we got super excited and decided to try it out! And, man, I swear, Bianca is a genius. We had four different types of bacteria, and we need not only to make dilutions of them in medium so that they grow and we could observe them under the microscope, but we wanted to also to make every possible mix of the four different bacteria, on one plate. We both came up with the solution, and it all fit on one plate. We could do the dilutions, mixes, and the control as well, all on one plate! Ok, maybe that's not so amazing... Anyway, I began to despair at the amount of miniscule volumes that I would have to painstakingly pipet into the small wells (because everything has to be super STERILE), but then I looked around and grinned at that heavensent machine sitting in the office. We had used it already, and it had done fantastic work, so we used the pipetting machine. Once it was done, there was nothing to do but wait until Monday. So, then I boarded the TGV, slept, and hit Marseille, had a load of fun (I've said that one hundred times already), and came back. Today, what we did is took out the cultures and put them under the microscope. The thing was that we didn't have the necessary knowledge and some missing equipment, so we spent three hours bent over a very complex machine that didn't really give us any results. We have concluded that we are to replicate the experiment (some of our control was infected for some reason too) tomorrw and see what that gives us. Interesting, and quite fun too, overall!
I didn't have access to a computer in Marseile, so the writing of my story has been delayed. I have started the storyboard though, and am well into it. The storyboard is actually quite fun, but also a challenge, because it takes some knowledge to know where to put the characters and play with the point of view and all. Back to work!
See y'all!
Clover