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Purpose: The purpose of the lab was to identify alu repeats in our DNA using PCR and electrophoresis. Hypothesis: If the lab is performed correctly then the results will show that I have Mexican heritage. Procedure: The 2% agarose gel ran at 150 V for 20 minutes and was stained using red gel dye for 72 hours. Lane A1 and B1 have 100 bp ladder. Lane A 2-7 and lane B 2-7 contained 20 mL of a 50 mL DNA and 10 µLloading dye solution. Lane A4 was supposed to contain the sample I worked with. Data:
The picture above shows that lanes A5 and B3 contain +/- genotypes. We didn’t get any other results. Analysis: The lab was inconclusive. Not enough results were collected. There were multiple opportunities for errors to occur. The lack of crushed iced made a portion of the lab difficult to perform. We may have made a few mistakes during that part of the lab. I lost my DNA sample right before it was supposed to go in lane A4. We could redo this lab with all of the necessary preparations in order to not fail again. This could lead to practicing PCR to find other sequences in our DNA. Since we failed this lab we had to improvise by using fake results. Here are the calculations.
Conclusion: This lab led to the discovery that preparation and caution during a lab is very important. We extracted our DNA and used PCR to look for a specific repeat in our DNA. We used agarose gel electrophoresis to look for the alu repeat. During a portion of the lab, crushed ice is required to keep the DNA samples cold. We had whole ice cubes instead of crushed ice. This made it very difficult to keep our DNA cold without if falling to the bottom of our container and nearly spilling its contents. When we had to use a micropipet to put our DNA samples in the agarose gel I could not my find my sample, so I could not complete the lab. I learned that being cautious and aware of all my materials in the lab would have allowed me to complete the lab.