In the final stages....

So, I wake up this morning, and BAM, realize that I have... until next Friday in this land of paradise. It seems that time seems so much more shorter when looking ahead. My brain has not stopped working, even in sleep I say, and I am constantly thinking about the myriad of things left to do in my hometown. Its very stressful, and it doesn't help when people say, "Oh man, I have to see you before you go!" That just reminds me, and I'm having a hard time getting over it right now. One of things that consoles and excites me is that when I return to Tucson, my other hometown, I get to see all my friends and family!

Had a very bust week last week, and it was magnificiently capped off by an experiment that I had to do myself again. Except, this time it wasn't a simple transformation of plasmid into bacteria, but a dilution of four different kinds of bacteria, the mixing of each kind of bacteria with another, and then that process multilied by two, because we wanted to mix the strains in a fifty-fifty proportion, and a twenty-eighty proportion. I must admit, I didn't have any confidence in my ability to do this experiment, but after a lot of confidence boosting comments from Elisa and Bianca, I decided to give it a shot. And... guess what. It worked. I was very happy with my work, and I have now added some swagger to my step as a walk through the halls of the building. So, what did we exactly last week? Well, we did the dilution, and then we took each different dilution and proportions and deposited them onto an agar plate, where we could see the combination of red and green bacteria grow. We also deposited them on agar on a 96 well plate, which is the plate we would take to the licroscope. We had wild type (that's the type of bacteria) green and red, and then delta NrdR red and green. When we took it out of the oven and put it under the fluorescent light, I think I jumped five feet in the air in excitment (which is completely possible, ask anyone in my class). There were different patterns of color where the bacteria had grown, and they formed... its very hard to describe, so that's why pictures of these bacteria are going posted as soon as I finish this post. Me and Bianca then decided to take it to the micorscope, where we took other pictures. What we saw both got us excited, and really just astounded me. Bacteria are really beautiful. And again, I'll post pictures of that so you can appreciate bacterial beauty too. So, anyway, we decided to do it again, just to see how it turned it out a second time. That when they told me to do it by myself, and then lo and behold, I come today, and they look as pretty as they did the first time.
So, the plan for this coming week. We're gonna make a bacterial MOVIE, son! That's right, we are gonna go to a lab with a special microscope, where we will be able to take pictures of the growing bacteria every three minutes and see the formation of these little beauties. Can't wait, seriously looking forward to this part.
So, nothing new except for the fact that my legs got ravaged by a rusty barbed wire fence when I tried to show and jump over it on uneven ground.. That was really cool. But yeah, nothin' new.
Unitl next time, this is Clover Powell, saying good night and good luck.