Team:WashU/Week11

Monday, August 6

Colony PCR of U construct using four new colonies and the same positive Z control has once again resulted in no successful colonies. However, the PCR has reaffirmed that the control works, which is a good sign.

We also did a PCR of the color constructs in order to form our BioPaint set. As these were not succesful, however, we will attempt them anew in the future. In the picture of the gel below, the lanes all contain color constructs. The one potentially successful PCR in the middle was obtained from the wrong DNA.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/88390549/pcrnot.jpg

Since our T plasmid and Z construct ligations have not been going well, we started over by preparing new cultures of Z and T, running them on a gel, and then gel purifying the results.

We began 5 ml cultures for the good Z construct with TOPO and for one of the U ligation colonies. We will use the Z culture for a glycerol stock, and digest the U culture to see if our ligations actually succeded.

Tuesday, August 7

Today, we digested the U ligation construct by cutting it, in two tubes, with AgeI-HI and NcoI. A double cutter, the AgeI-HI would excise out the insert, whereas NcoI cuts once. The results, shown below, indicate that our U ligation is incorrect. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/88390549/U%20test%20080712.jpg

We also PCR'd up the Z construct, U construct, and Z+TOPO constructs using KlenTaq.

Wednesday, August 8

This morning, we ran the three PCRs from yesterday on a gel. The Z and U constructs were successfully PCR'd, but the Z+T construct did not succeed and we only saw primer dimers in that well of the gel. We took the Z and U constructs, digested them with EcoRI (E) and PstI (P), and ran them on a gel. We also digested the chloramphenicol plasmid that we plan to use for submission and ran it on the same gel. Afterwards, we gel purified the three pieces of DNA. We finished off by ligating together the Z construct and C plasmid in one tube and the Z construct and C plasmid in another tube. Tomorrow, we will transform E. coli with our ligation results.

Finally, we started cultures of our Z ligation, control, and a zeaxanthin culture to use tomorrow to test whether our genes are working properly.

Thursday, August 9

We transformed E. coli GC5 cells with the ligation results from yesterday and plated the cells.

Created standard curve for crocin [INSERT PICTURE/SEE CHARACTERIZATION PAGE]

Started culture of Z-construct in T plasmid, with zeaxanthin-producing gene.

Digested PSL2131, PSL2134, and RFP constructs. Cut with X and P. Ran on gel and gel purified. Ligated RFP constructs into plasmids while maintaining homology regions. Transformed GC5s with ligation results. Plated on Kan resistant plates.

In vitro assay of crocin production - have induced cultures

Friday, August 10

This morning, we picked a colony from the U ligation plate from yesterday. After growing it up in culture, we miniprepped it and __________.