been away

Well I've been ignoring this blog abit but I;ve been busy figuring in why the Sult in the zebra danio's is giving me a negitive image on my western blot. While a 20lbs cat seems to find that its okay to sleep on the keyboard while I type. Stupid cant uh I'll be alone in the lab on monday and will be alone until after the half way past the week.

A long day

well i did the plate reading assay quickly and got the right results unlike the last run which didn't even come out as linear. Th only down note is I kept screwing up the TBS buffer for monday its really sad on my part oh well I'll relax over the week end a look over mondays work. I hope someone feed the fish as the school was closed by the time I got to the main campus. Also the ATC building is a daycare center and I'm still paying for it hell charge the parents if they bring the kids... no that mean

Triumphant return to T107

Finally I'm back in my favorite room. Today I got to make a solution that was modified from 1L to 100ml. I got to calibrate the scales and the pH meter. I tested the pH of my solution and topped it off with acid so that its pH would read 8.0. The only things that went off course today would be the fact one fish knew its fate of being homogenized and decide to take the glorious path of suicide. The other problem was that the solution buffer for the fish froze but i got to eat lunch so i'm rather happy with that. After homogenizing the fish I spun the 6 tubes and separated the pellet from the supernate and stored both acordingly in the -80 centigrade freezer.

Vacations!

Wonderful things vacations are.... Everyone seems to on one but me. So I sit and wait feeding and cleaning zebra fish routinely. in all I hope next week I'll get to grind up the fish and do a few assays.

The fish are alive!

I should use a script huh?

Not much to report

Well I've been a way from here for awhile, but I really don't have much to say other then one of our chemicals Bisphenol A arrived and I got to read the emergency over view and first aid measures. As for filler I'll say this Watson and Crick are called thieves by most people that learned about their DNA helix discovery all they did was just put the pieces that everyone came up with together. People that say they are thieves are merely jealous of the fact they haven't found a quick easy way to become a famous Nobel Prize winner,and are just to smug to admit that.

Weekend jitters

well after discovering the zebra fish need a day night cycle I bought a timed light switch and weekend feeders. So this weekends impact on Monday will be either more dead fish which will reduce us for six down to two if past loses repeat themselves, or everyone is alive and when I clean the tanks on Monday I won't be cleaning out half eaten fish bodies.

More dead fish. i swear to god this project is turning into vietnam for fish so far I have 13 dead fish in total thats more dead fish then the amount needed to start the project. I am chalking the deaths up to lack of food. Still I'm going to question the pH of the tanks and requisition a pH meter. This should give me something fun to do for once.

Another day and another fish

Well I hope that there is at least one male zebra fish in that tank now. I honestly believe the first eight fish were male and "off-ed" themselves because the female fish wouldn't shut up with "we never go anywhere nice" or "You always forget which flake color is my favorite". yeah that's is pretty much how I explain the suicides. I got the new group acclimated to the tank and let them in the water. As for a wrench in the works turns out that the smallest pellets around are to big for a zebra fish. I'm back to reading the articles

Fish suicides

Well the second week in after getting the 12 fish it seems 7 of them commited suicide by trapping themselves near heater. Of course I came to that conclusion after rushing about checking the tanks pH and temp over few time to make sure nothing went off. I burn myself doing just that and my stings. They pretty much fried to a crisp then turned into a muck paste. As for the rest one seems pregnant. It won't lay the eggs unless a male comes around. After that we should have about 3-5 days before the eggs hatch. so I'm now going to watch and see what happens. I can remove the eggs with an eye dropper or a straw. I'm off to dig for Sult 1 articles and then I'll regroup. So far I've logged 20 hours i could've stay longer then 2:00pm however security was bit rude about me sitting around in the biology room and all the public computers were busy.

Late night work and a bit of sugar

well I'm making a late post I have been forgetting my birthdays for a long time I honestly don't give a (got you)! I could really care less about them so what I'm 25. The thing people should concern themselves with is that I might be turning into the guy who wants to be the dreaded "family man". I don't know why or how. However most of my plans for being one sort of end badly my red problem has resurfaced. I digress I honestly forgot what I was supossed to be looking for in the mess that was my family's "surprise party". "Derek go buy the list of things I need to get for your birthday party" my mother told me this morning. I know I need to find some new SULT1/2 strains so far I have a few hits nothing great but I'll keep working hopefully I'll get the time to cure my new illness.

Fish and back to the drawing board with 90% less sodium

Well it turns out that zebra fish are pretty quick seeing as it took 20 minutes to catch 12 of the little buggers. Also after seeing how much the very needed heaters cost per unit I'm glad that I'm not filing reimbersment papers. I guess being an intern manual labor gunt isn't all bad cash wise. After all the work with the SULT enzymes I looked at before I over looked one detail. The fact that they used radioactive materials and we don't have a lisence for those materials.

more of the same

Today all I really did was check the pH of the tanks and made sure that the temperature was inbetween 72-81 degrees F. I used pHydrion Spectral 1-14 pH test paper after waiting for a class stationed in the room outside the room holding the fish tanks. I had the three tanks at a good balance of 78 degrees. As for the pH the zebra fish need a tad basic (6) or a standard of 7 (water). I lucked out seeing as the water was naturally at 6.5pH. so far i have logged a total of 15 hours starting as of monday the 7th of June

Day 2 and happy birthday to me

Well today is the day I did some paperwork on having all the expendatures paid off. I also did the final constructive job constructing three U2 class filters all the pieces a on the left all in all they were pretty cool to work with. After that I filled the tanks and set the lights and I now hope the fish tanks will be at the right temperature so I can buy the fish start the experiment

Day 1 antibody search

Alright lets see today is technically the first day of my internship. i actually started on the 3rd of june I was going to start that day but I was to damned tired i honestly thought the most physically gruelling thing would be getting coffee or something. Instead I was running around a room with three 30 gallon tanks trying to find a spot for them. it took two days i'd be alittle more up and at it today if I didn't spend my week end fixing/fighting a leaky basement in a two day rain fest. Well I'm off to start searching for an anti body that shows up under SULT-1 so far I have a few hits but I still need to find and match things to a zebrafish.