AL's+Week+of+Oct.+22

AL's Logbook

__10/22/07__ - Today in class I finished and turned in my Task List Outline to help me focus my class time and time in the lab. I also created this logbook page here so that now everyone can see what I'm doing that's science related. I have a link to this on the AFM and DNA page. I was also having some trouble getting updates up with an anchor appearing in the edit space in place of my logbook entries.

__10/23/07__ - Here is the link to my task outline:



I finally was able to get my logbook entries up without the anchor icon appearing.

I also went to the lab at Notre Dame today, where I went to the AFM to take images of my new sample. The sample I was looking at was linearized DNA on APTES deposited on a silicon wafer. This linearized DNA is simply a DNA plasmid (which is circular) cut at a restriction site by the enzyme. This should allow the DNA to relax and make the changes made to the DNA because of the solutions more visible on the AFM. I only took one image and it wasn't even that good (there was dirt and things on the sample).

__10/24/07__ - Today I added things to yesterday's log book explaining what kind of sample I had used and elaborating on it. I have added my summer work to the main AFM DNA page with the different solutions I've used with the APTES. For example I used 8 microliters of APTES with 12 microliters of PEG solution.

__10/25/07__ - Today in the lab I used silicon wafers I cleaned last week and deposited the APTES solution on to the silicon wafer for about 15 minutes. The way this works is I fill a vial with 20 microliters of APTES and 1980 microliters of water, then submerge the small silicon wafers. Afterwards, I deposited the linearized DNA on to the wafer for another 15 minutes. What I did differently was softly blow the DNA solution on the wafer with Nitrogen gas in the hopes of making the DNA straight/ It should look something like the DNA looked like when deposited on a PEG solution surface, such as with this image:



The DNA is circled in black, although there are other plasmids if you look. This is DNA under PEG solution.

__10/26/07__ - Today I talked to Renula about the lab. We discussed Alan Huang's old project and what it has to do with our current project. I read through his poster briefly to see what he did and how he presented his information.