New Microarray Experiment

On Friday (December 6th), I finally returned to RPI! JP explained to me a new experiment that we're running. We are now running a microarray to analyze the binding of HCP proteins that we do not want to bind to the biologic that we are creating. This information will be used in the purification work I described in an earlier post.

Today, most of my time was spent waiting for the microarray slides to incubate (they had to incubate for an entire two hours!). While I waited, Doug and I adjusted the pH of the PBS he was making using a 1M NaOH solution to increase the pH to 5.5.  I then labeled the tubes for HCP and PBS solutions and the petri dishes containing the slides that would eventually be used with those solutions. Some tubes would contain 1 mL of PBS, some would contain 1 mL of HCP solution, and some would contain a mixture of half PBS and half HCP solution. After I finished labeling, I added the indicated amounts of PBS and HCP solution to the tubes.

After the tubes were all filled, Doug and I made amino acid solutions. After some practice, I'm definitely getting faster at weighing out the amino acids!

When the slides were finally done incubating, we washed them three times with the new PBS solution for 10 minutes per wash. By the time the washes were over, it was time for me to go back to Emma!

I can't wait to return to RPI next week for my last visit of the semester and see the results of this experiment!