Bacteria samples from Friday’s lesson (18/06)
A big area of a bacteria growth on one of the samples.
Counting up all the areas the bacteria has grown.
Then on Tuesday (22/06) we did another practical where there had been a fictional crime and we had been given different samples of ‘DNA’ which we had to test to see which suspect is most likely to have commited the crime. It was quite a small experiment as the sample sizes are so small we had to use special pipettes to take the DNA samples and put them in tiny test tubes, heated, which we then mixed with a dye. We did the same with the sample found at the “crime scene”. We then had to set a type of gel into this electrical thingy and put grates into it and then put a bit of each sample into the grates and turn the electrical thingy on. We haven’t quite finished it so I don’t know what will happen but when we left it the dye was moving from the grates along the set gel. So I guess whichever dye stops at the same place as the DNA found at the crime scene, that will be the suspect most likely to have commited the fictional crime. It was quite interesting and it was good to see science is applied in different ways besides the usual things like medicine etc.
The little coloured vials contain the DNA samples we had to extract and put into mini test tubes added to dye.
The separate beakers for the different pipette tips to prevent contamination of samples.
Electrical thingy!
Ramblings of Simi 
Ooh! We did that experiment at summer school- gel electrophoresis 🙂 You’ll do a lot of that next year!
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Exactly! The blue dye was scary because it really stained! It was really fun so *yay* to do more! 😀 xxxx
We weren’t allowed to touch the dye at SS, but we were at school. I love electrophoresis, it”s so cool! xxx
We had to lift the gel and put it in a little plate thing full of dye then rinse it out with water til all the excess dye was out and you could see the bands 🙂
The crime was a stolen lollypop. :p
xxxx
Haha! Ours was a murder at SS. We went into the lab and they’d turned the chairs upside down and drawn a body on the floor with blood and stuff and roped the area off with police tape. Was very cool! And the murderer was one of us (we’d isolated our own dna the day before)!
xxx
wow that sounds so much more exciting!! i didn’t turn out to be the thief :p it was one of my friends. We didn’t get to isolate our own DNA 😦 we just labelled a different colour.
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