Day 21

December 7, 2011

Today we did an experiment but I'm not exactly sure what the name of it was. We've done it before. It was a little tedious but it was interesting. The goal was the take this positively charged nanoparticle and place it in a cell. The significance of this process was that the nanoparticle was a polymer with DNA as opposed to a neutral polymer. This nanoparticle is able to produce a lot more Luciferase. Luciferase is apparently good for the body which was why it was the goal for the experiment. Then we added on to that experiment to calculate the data of how much luciferase was actually produced. We started with 100ml of Luciferase. Then we added 20ml of DNA, mixed the two together, and then placed the tube that contained the mixture into this machine that quickly calculated the amount. We did several trials. But all the trials ended up for some reason not working. Every trial showed a very miniscule amount of Luciferase which was not supposed to happen. JM thinks that maybe the cells had gone bad somehow. He said that the cells originally looked strange in the beginning, so that might have been the reason why the experiment didn't work. Of course it's a little upsetting when the experiment that you're working on for hours doesn't work, but it's unavoidable and it will continue to happen. That was pretty much all we did today.