The Never-ending Droids

In the week of April 30th I was finished with my DNA extractions and began running a PCR. I used four different primers. I had five DNA extractions in total due to the five different pharaoh ant colonies. I ran all five samples separately for each primer. After the PCR, I began running a gel from each primer set. I found a trend in the polymorphic bands while looking at the gel under the UV lighting. It seemed as though colonies 1&3 had similar polymorphic bands while colonies 2,4,&5 had similar polymorphic banding with one another. Below you shall see the gels of each different primer and the DNA amplification of each colony over five lines.

Gel with DNA samples amplified with Primer 1.

Gel with DNA samples amplified with Primer 2.

Gel with DNA samples amplified with Primer 3.

Gel with DNA samples amplified with Primer 4.

Running Trade Federation Gels

In the week of April 16th I ran gels on the DNA samples I amplified with the PCR. It did not turn out very well;I was a bit disappointed in how the amplification turned out. I wanted to see bright,beautiful polymorphic bands, but only recieved unclear, smeared remnants of my DNA in the gel. I had used primers 1 & 2 to amplify two sets of samples. I used four samples of DNA with primer 1; one control DNA extraction and four other DNA extractions with a novel method. I did the same samples for primer 2 as well. When I ran a gel on each primer to see which primer would amplify the DNA better, I did not see good results. Below are the pictures of the gels and how they turned out. 

Gel of amplified DNA with primer 1.

Gel of amplified DNA with  primer 2.