PCR Lab Report
The purpose of this lab was to find how many Alu repeats we had in our DNA. This would allow us to see where we came from and compare with our classmates. I hypothesized that if it worked, it would show me coming from the Chilean side and if it didn’t, then it would show me coming from around here.
Over the course of this lab, my group and I had a few fails along the way. At the beginning of the project, we had to first rinse our mouths with 10 mL of a saline solution for 30 seconds and spit it pack into the cup to extract some of our DNA. After that we transferred 1.5mL of the saline solution into a microfuge tube. We then took that and put it in a microcentrifuge where it spun for 1 minute. This would pellet the cells bringing them all to the bottom. Next, we extracted some of the saline making sure to keep 100 uL of it around the cells. We then transferred that into a Chelex tube using a pipette which had 5% of the chelex in it(Small beads). Next, we took our tube to a heat lock station, slid a cap lock onto it, and let it stay there for 10 minutes before taking it out. After this we took off the cap locks and opened up the tubes to release the pressure. Once again, we put them back into the microcentrifuge for a minute. After all of this we transferred 50 uL of it into a new 1.5 mL microfuge tube carefully as to not transfer the Chelex beads. We then gave these tubes to our teacher who refrigerated our DNA.
The final day was transferring our DNA into gel which would then show us our Alu repeats. To do this we put 20 uL of Master Mix(dye) into our DNA so we could better see our results. We then used a pipette to extract our DNA and put it into the gel, careful to not let it spill on top.
When we were finally done and got to examine our results, we had none. This goes to show that this experiment was really difficult considering that we weren’t the only group to fail. Other groups failed to since there only result was the one that we were supposed to compare our data too. In conclusion, finding our Alu repeats can be very challenging and will not work if even one thing is wrong.
Reflection
During this project my group and I had more than a few mess ups in the beginning, so we were slightly behind everyone else. One of the most memorable mess ups was when my teammate Landon knocked over my other teammate Alexis's saline solution. She then had to rinse her mouth again with the solution and let me just say, it didn't taste the best. I did however learn a few things throughout this project like how to use a pipette and that you can mess up over and over again.
I feel like if I were to do this project again I could have done a lot better. Better being not messing up almost everything in the beginning and holding the pipette more firmly so that it doesn't shake when I am extracting liquids. I did however enjoy this project (except for the saline solution) and felt as if I could do more like it in the future.
I feel like if I were to do this project again I could have done a lot better. Better being not messing up almost everything in the beginning and holding the pipette more firmly so that it doesn't shake when I am extracting liquids. I did however enjoy this project (except for the saline solution) and felt as if I could do more like it in the future.