Thanks to the Deathstar

This week was pretty hectic working on our SSTEM projects as well as our final draft. I tried running some more gels this week in hopes of seeing some DNA from my newest extractions. My gel still did not show any DNA from under the UV lighting. In my presentation I felt a bit afraid of showing gels without polymorphic banding, but my mentors/SSTEM scholars reassured me that it was not a waste. Through my failure of not extracting DNA from the cholla spines actually proved those protocols I used were not effective and to avoid using the same steps next time.

 One of my gels from this past week that showed I had not yielded any DNA from my extractions. In my next post I hope to have some polymorphic banding.

Going Forward On A Speeder Bike

Fortunately, I was able to conduct these DNA extractions in the biology lab and I was able to retrieve a piece of cylindropuntia bigelovii from the PC greenhouse. The next steps will be to create different reagents in order to extract the DNA from the cholla spines. I also plan on collaborating with other DNA plant extractions I have read from previouse S-STEM scholars in hopes of having some luck on extracting DNA and seeing it under the UV light after electrophoresis. I need to see polymorphic banding from cholla cacti in order to answer my question on whether chollas reproduce sexually or asexually.