Hello All!

I guess my journey with Laccase enzyme has ended this week 🙁 The visiting scholar is so busy with her research and she is facing some issues with her project as well and I don’t want to bother her any longer.  I am hoping that before she leaves for Spain, I can continue with what we have started.

The following were the highlights this week;

a)  Dr. Yu showed me how to perform the Drop Spot Test.  He needs to do this to confirm the efficiency of the phages (in different dilutions) we have been using and check the condition of the bacterial stock as well since we have been having not so good results in our efficiency test.  We found out from this test that the bacteria we’re using has been contaminated with phages.  The test also revealed that there was so much media in the solution, so there is a need to purify the phage as well.

b)  Dr. Chu showed me the process of purifying the phage solution.

c) I was taught how to harvest/isolate and purify phages of interest from a plate.  I think this is the best take away for the week.  I have been wondering how to isolate the phage from the culture.  After isolating the phage, we did the efficiency test for the phage to determine its polyvalency.  It’s amazing that these phages come from one source and grew in the same culture plate yet they can evolve so fast.

d)  We also did a growth curve for the bacteria used in the efficiency test to determine it’s growth over 14 hours  using the plate reader.

Dr. Yu asked me to do more literature review on colorimetric detection of different bacterial host.  This is the direction of my project.  I was able to find some interesting articles but I am not sure If we can conduct the experimentation in the lab considering the time left. This is a big project and they haven’t started it so far.  I am contributing to the project by reading articles on how to do it.  I feel good about it although it is a pain searching and reading articles but my mentor is grateful for all my efforts 🙂

I am feeling the pressure already.  It seems like time flies so fast especially if there’s a lot of things that you want to accomplish.  However, I am taking it one day at a time and enjoying every moment of the experience! Till then….