Team:Leicester/August2012

(9:30 am) Several members of the team are given wrong start times, so only 1 student arrived in the lab at 9:30, however with the work needed to be done all the rest of the team are quickly on their way.

(10:30 am) With everyone now in the lab it turns out a lot of the work planned for today has to wait until tomorrow. This is due to the ''Pseudomonas'' strains needed to be grown in a rich luria broth before we can spin it into a pellet and then run the DNA extraction.

(11:40 am) With all the bacteria placed in the 15ml corning tubes, and placed in the orbital shaker all of today's labwork is complete. Now the team is going to finish the recording for the rockethub video as some scenes need to be retaken, then do some individual research/work.

(13:30 pm) After consulting with a supervisor and having a long meeting over lunch the team has decided several directions that is needed to go in. One member is testing the cooling times of a water bath that will be used in the hybridizing process of making our DNA libraries, and to start selecting out of the DNA genes that are in both our Pseudomonas and the NB26 strain that definitely degrades polystyrene. A couple of members are looking through protocol and methods to use with the DNA extraction.

(9:30 am) An early start finishing all the protocol and work needed to start making the DNA libraries.

(10:00 am) ''E. coli'' is placed into 7ml of LB media and put into the warm room to grow overnight and be used as the test tomorrow to check the DNA extraction process before using the ''Pseudomonas'' species.

(11:30 am) The protocol for tomorrow's practicals is determined, for the test of the DNA extraction, as well as dilutions to check the growth so there is a measurable amount that the ''Pseudomonas'' can be compared to, so in future to measure the amount of ''Pseudomonas'' the team has it can simply be spectrophotometrized.

(4:00 pm) Made the ''E. coli'' into a 50ml broth to grow overnight for the dilutions and spectrophotometry.

(9:00 am) Action stations. All labwork is go. Today there are 2 experiments going: the DNA extraction test and the dilutions to test the method works. Once these are done, the team knows what works and doesn't work for the real experiments on ''Pseudomonas'' early next week.

(10:00 am) Na na na na na na na na BATMAN!

(10:30 am) The team splits into 2 groups and goes to do the tasks with a qill of iron.

The half doing the dilutions to make the growth curve left our dedicated bit of lab space and headed into one of the supervisors labs with a good spectrophotometer and space to work with the bacteria.

Protocol:

1. Put 1ml of culture into a spectrophotomer and take a reading at 600nm. Record this as time = 0. Start the timer.

2. At same time, take an aliquot of 100microl and put in eppindorf marked as time 0, 10^-1 dilution. Add 900microl of buffer and mix, then take 100 microl from this solution and add to next eppendorf, marked time 0, 10^-2 dilution and so on to 10^-9.

3. Pipette 100microl of dilutions 10^-4 to 10^-9 onto similarly labelled pre-prepared agar plates and spread them.

4. Repeat step 2 every 40 minutes and step 4 every 2 hours (3 divisions of E. coli) until the end of time.

5. Leave plates to grow, then count the number of colonies growing on the most concentrated plate where colonies are distinguishable. Multiply up to the true concentration, then multiply by 10. This is colonies/ml.

6. Draw graph to see correlation and check against known correlation to see if it has worked.

(16:30 pm) The dilutions and CFU count part of the experiment is finished, there is 6 hours of readings for the CFU count as well as plates for 0, 2 and 4 hours.

The only thing needed to be done today is help the technician gave the team. This involved producing ''E. coli'' overnight cultures for the DNA extraction and digest.

(9:30 am) Today the team is going to extract the genome and start the DNA digest of the ''E. coli'' to test the DNA extraction kit and procedure that the team has identified to use.

This is a big step that if works, can then be applied to the ''Pseudomonas'' strains that are growing. So that once the NB26 strain arrives it can be compared straight away to give an idea which genes could be involved in the degredation of polystyrene and to help start narrowing our search.

The overnight cultures of E. coli were then analysed using the spectrophotometer to give an initial bacterial cell count before the digest.

(12:30pm) The results for yesterday's experiment is back. Unfortunately the data that was collected is not enough to create a graph to simply show us what the bacteria cell count is from reading an absorbance.

The new protocol for today's experiment that will tell the team this data is:

1. Inoculate 49.9ml of broth with 0.1ml of the overnight bacteria colony. Mix, start timer, and immediately do 3 and 4.

2. Put 1ml of culture into a spectrophotomer and take a reading at 600nm. Record this as time = 0. Start a timer.

3. At same time, take an aliquot of 100microl and put in eppindorf marked as time 0, 10^-1 dilution. Add 900microl of buffer and mix, then take 100 microl from this solution and add to next eppendorf, marked time 0, 10^-2 dilution and so on to 10^-7.

4. Pipette 100microl of dilutions 10^-5 to 10^-7 onto similarly labelled pre-prepared agar plates and spread them.

5. Repeat steps 3-5 every 40min (1 doubling of E. coli) (labelling time appropriately) until the end of time.

6. Leave plates to grow, then count the number of colonies growing on the most concentrated plate where colonies are distinguishable. Multiply up to the true concentration, then multiply by 10. This is colonies/ml.

7. Draw graph to see correlation and check against known correlation to see if it has worked.

(13:30pm) After finally finishing all the reading up and gathering of ingredients, the DNA extraction process is finally started. Protocol is as mentioned in the QIAGEN Genomic DNA Handbook.

Almost as soon as it was started the first few sections were complete and the cells needed to be left in a 37oC water bath for a while so the team members had to wait again. And then had to wait again after adding different buffer while the cell extract was left at 50oC.

(15:00) The current step is using the genomic tip protocol to extract DNA. Unfortunately, the flow rate is very slow so this may take a while until the DNA can be washed and eluted.

(17:30) Today's refinement of the growth curve experiment worked. Well at least the protocol did, the actual experiment failed but after talking to the supervisor in a group meeting, the team realised what went wrong so it would work tomorrow. Just before finishing, 3ml of luria broth was innoculated with a single colony of ''E. coli'' as well as the plates being made up.

(8:00 am) A very early start for part of the group working on fixing the dilutions experiment. In for 8am, and started at 8:30 for a long day's practical.

To create the library a few things need to be known: Is the bacteria gram positive or negative? Is the DNA chromosomal or plasmid? How much DNA is going to be extracted? All ''Pseudomonas'' is gram negative, and the team wants to extract as much of the plasmid DNA as possible, as this is where the team thinks the polystyrene degredation enzyme is located. With all these answered the group can collect the right DNA extraction kit and start working.