College of Wooster Biochemistry Day 12: Happy Friday! And not just any Friday but Friday July 3rd.
The morning started with a walk to breakfast alongside Ethan, Jake, and Ryan. We stopped by the Lowry dining center to grab a light breakfast and walk to the science building for our lecture. We had to make sure to grab our caffeine as well or else we would be falling asleep.
From there we headed straight into our longest block of the day; a lecture and activity on Homology-Based Structures, running from 8 to 11:30 AM. In short, homology modeling lets researchers predict the 3D structure of a protein by comparing its sequence to proteins whose structures are already known. It went by faster than expected because we had so much work to do and by the end we were ready for lunch.
After we finished our lunch, we spent the afternoon entirely in the lab. Today was a big one. SDS gel sample prep, running, and staining. SDS-PAGE separates proteins by molecular weight using an electric current and denatures the proteins so they are in their primary structure. It started with heating our protein samples in a sand bath at around 100 degrees Celsius. My group shaped our microcentrifuges in a heart shape in the sand bath 🙂
Then came loading our samples, where we got to use special pipette tips.
After we finished the gel, we had a writing activity on how to write a strong Materials and Methods section. A good Methods section has to be detailed enough that someone could replicate your experiment exactly but shouldn’t be too detailed that it’s stating things like turning a machine on.
After a bit of open classroom where we got work on anything we needed to, we all headed
to dinner.
To cap off the night, a group of us got together and played some poker. This was my first time playing, so there was a bit of a learning curve to say the least, but beginner’s luck along with a little bit of bluffing let me and my teammate win all the imaginary money, but the most exciting part of the night was the anticipation for tomorrow. July 4th is tomorrow, and we are all looking forward to a full day of activities, especially grilling for dinner.
Happy early 4th of July!
