Ugh. Friday was a pain in the bum. I’ve mentioned how my PCR hasn’t been working very well. It was quite sudden, the not working was, but I’m not sure when it started. I checked the DNA and it apears to be contaminated with proten. This is frustrating because it means we might need to find a better way to extract it frm the cells. Yesterday I was doing the old extraction method with phenol. Phenol is really nasty stuff, it’s toxic. It also takes a lot longer to extract the DNA with that method. So not only did I not finish extracting the DNA yesterday but I felt really icky from whiffing phenol. One should use phenol in the fume hood and I did for some of it but some of it was too fiddly, for example extracting supernatant off the top of the protein and other gunk layer (like oil on top of water andyou want to get the oil off without any water).
I didn’t go to Fully SIC because I felt odd. I had a good rest though. I feel very tired right now, I could do with another nap!