Have you ever wanted to go on a tour of NC States “state” of the art laboratory? Well you’re in luck today, for Jessie showed me all the ins and outs of every laboratory equipment in her lab! The first laboratory equipment she showed me was a machine that separated proteins by their size. According to Jessie, this piece of equipment is probably the most expensive, warranted for how impressive and complex of a machine it looks.
The second piece of equipment was a gigantic centrifuge, which is a devise used for separating particles from a solution according to their size, shape, density, and viscosity.
Most of the rest of the machines in the laboratory were used for analyzing various types of DNA in relation to the output result a given scientist desired.
After touring the chemistry laboratory, Jessie decided to start preparing samples of tolyporphin in solutions so that we could extract the DNA later with liquid nitrogen. To accomplish this result, it is crucial to crush the tolyporphin into very thin fragments to analyze. A mortar and pestle was used to crush the tolyporhphin until its green hue turned to more of a whitish color – liquid nitrogen was poured periodically to keep the substance cold and in a suitable environment for the experiment.
Click here for an encounter with liquid nitrogen!
This step was perhaps the most intensive as it took around 30 to 45 minutes to crush the tolyporhphin to this state. Once this step was completed, the DNA fragments were extracted with phenl, a mildly toxic substance for humans, and the separated DNA fragments were extracted. To achieve accuracy and preciseness, this step was repeated about three times. Finally, to conclude the day, the separated DNA fragments were injected into a sample of bacteria to test and the results of the experiment will be analyzed tomorrow!