Thursday May 13, 2010

Today, we spent the day learning another protocol that will be used throughout the summer: Transformation. The procedure is used to transform plasmids into Top10 Competent cells which were made yesterday. The transformation procedure is done through heat shocking the competent cells and then icing again before recovering in SOC solution. The full transformation procedure can be found in our Lab Protocols. With the rest of our time, we continued to read papers pertaining to projects that are possibilities for us to do over the summer. Today, the papers centered mainly around the protein troubleshooting circuits and the potential Oilsands project. We found the Oilsands Initiative that had been proposed and were debating whether we should apply for it due to the funding that would be provided. Various other papers were read as well to try and find other projects that were feasible to do over the summer.