figure out how much DNA is in the samples

Post date: Aug 9, 2013 5:51:31 PM

During the last two weeks, I did some more DNA extractions, but this time with samples from the Western Antarctic Peninsula! After the DNA extractions were finished, we went to the Stanford Medical School area to get the DNA quantified and to check to the quality of our DNA.

To get the DNA quantified, we made standards and added PicoGreen Solution to the samples so the plate reader machine will be able to detect the amount of fluorescence. The fluorescence of the standards are used to create a line graph. Using the equation from the line graph, we can figure out how much DNA is in the samples we extracted by plugging in the fluorescence of the samples into the equation.

An example of what the line graph of the standards looks like this:

We also checked the quality of our DNA by using Bioanalyzers. For the bioanalyzer, we put our samples into specific wells of the bioanalyzer chip and then put it in the bioanalyzer machine. The machine checks the quality of the DNA by determining how long the DNA pieces are and their fluorescence.

This was what our bioanalyzer results looked like:

Wednesday was the last official day of the internship and we got to listen to presentations from all the interns. It was great hearing the different kinds of projects everyone worked on and the funny stories that came along with them. I'm definitely going to miss a lot of the interns!