Just something to think about being able to…

Nicola / / Uncategorized

Just something to think about – being able to innovate and create novel data as a scientist is about being able to adapt, alter and invent methods to gain new results. Therefore, if you don’t understand the methods you’re using, you can never advance. You’ve probably never really done it before, as I suspect you’ve just blindly followed the provided SOPs, but from this point on, start digging deeper into the science behind the experiment. Learn about the function of every chemical, of every physical action, and you’ll be able to understand why the experiment works the way it does. That is all I do, and that is the main reason why I can make suggestions of change when things aren’t working.

Unloaded autoclave poured 1200ml nutrient agar plates and…

Deborah / / Uncategorized

Unloaded autoclave, poured 1200ml nutrient agar plates and 400ml MEA plates and set universal jars as slope jars. Learned that plates that are to be used straight away can be made a little thinner than those being made as stock to be stored.Gram stained first set of culture plates and verified as much as possible E.coli. Little more relaxed today, long lunch and a little waiting for autoclave to complete its 2hr cycle. still cant wait for tomorrow though!

After an exciting introductory week of extracting DNA…

Shaz RIchardson / / Uncategorized

After an exciting introductory week of extracting DNA from dogs testes and starting projects relating to water samples from the brayford,today has been a little bit less busy but knowledgable non the less. Today I have learnt how to make nutrient agar and mea agar and I have been researching plasmids and ecoli for my projects.

Started the morning off by streaking nutrient agar…

Deborah / / Uncategorized

Started the morning off by streaking nutrient agar plates from cultures thought to be ‘dead’ and put them in the incubator til tomrrow. Stock cultures from the lab were previously streaked on agar plates, today my task was to isolate single colonies and make up streak plates, these were placed in the incubator until tomorrow when they will hopefully have grown so they can then be gram stained and identified. Then i chose a project to conduct over the summer, If a pure sample of soya can be located then i hope to design a working PCR test to detect GM soya in non GM foods.

Hey Everyone My name is Amy as I’m…

Amy Thompson / / Uncategorized

Hey Everyone! 🙂

My name is Amy, as I’m sure some of you will already know, and I have just finished my second year as a Biomedical Science student. I haven’t actually started my lab work yet, but you will see me around the lab from Monday 18th June, as I start my UROS project with Mike Shaw. Our project involves the molecular characterisation of clinical Propionibacterium acnes strains by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), and whether this technique is too much of a technical challenge for an undergraduate student. I am therefore very lucky to have Jo Manev, as well as Mike to help me out!

I am really looking forward to getting started with the project, even though I know it is going to be a challenge at times! I hope this opportunity will help me to become more confident in the microbiology/molecular biology lab and prepare me for my final year project, which I hope will be in the field of microbiology/molecular biology. After graduating I am very interested in progressing to PhD study, hopefully within microbiology/molecular biology. Therefore, the opportunity to work along side current post graduate students, lecturers and other students (all of you!) will be incredibly valuable, in terms of gaining first hand experience and advise to help me achieve my aspirations.

As well as blogging on this site with you all, myself, Mike and Jo will hopefully also be producing a video blog of interesting and important milestones during our project. Which should really fun and useful for other students to watch!

See you all soon! 🙂

Um hey I’ll get around to changing my…

Rach / / Uncategorized

Um… hey!!
I’ll get around to changing my avatar but for now I think a little pink alien depicts me pretty well!
I’m Rachael, Rach, whatever you feel like calling me. Just finished year 1 biomed and had my first day in the lab today 🙂 Kinda feels like the first day back at school but all good and looking forward to more. Thankyou for making me welcome today and tomorrow I will bring paper! 🙂 x

Not a lab update as such but today…

Deborah / / Uncategorized

Not a lab update as such, but today i learned how to set up a blog. Sooo proud of myself right now! Had a fantastic 3 days in the lab. Made a selection of agars, collected water from the Brayford (dodging the muscovy ducks), water filtration, extracted dna from dogs nuts, made agarose gel and ran electrophoresis. Learned a couple of new research websites and met some really nice people x Phew! can’t wait for next week x

Well it’s nearly the end of the first…

Alice Gillett / / Uncategorized

Well it’s nearly the end of the first week so I thought I should introduce myself properly!!!!! My name is Alice and I’ve just finished my third year in Forensic Science :- )

For the next few months is will be working on a project based around the work I did for my dissertation, developing an infection model using Galleria mellonella (wax moth caterpillar) to study treatment of infections caused by the bacteria Acinetobacter baumannii.
Although for most this has been there first week of lab time, me being eager I had started last week with the intention of setting up my kill kinetics to discover the pathogenicity of the bacteria towards the caterpillars.

After injecting over 160 caterpillars (Yes I know…Cruel!!!) I had a good feeling that everything was going well…however after 96 hours of observations my results were not what I expected. Majority of caterpillars had beaten the infection and survived! Although this is great news for caterpillars worldwide…it’s not so great for me!!!

These results along with a couple of other indicators (including smell and questionable Gram stains) has lead me to doubt my bacteria, so starting next week I will be starting from scratch culturing a fresh batch of bacteria from a culti loop. So if your about in the lab next and fancy injecting a few caterpillars for me you will be more than welcome!
Next week I am also hoping to have set up a Checkerboard assay for measuring antibiotic synergy. This could be quite interesting as I have never done this before.

See you next week 🙂

Starting to get set up in the lab…

Nicola / / Uncategorized

Starting to get set up in the lab now – another week and we might get some interesting results to post!

1. Alkaline lysis solutions made up, ready for plasmid extraction for the stability plasmid experiments for Sophie. Struggling with getting my E. coli cultures revived after they were left to die off in the fridge, but I’m confident I’ll get them back.

2. Lysis buffers set up ready for bulk NA extraction from dog testes (tomorrow’s activity) so everyone can have a go at some guaranteed successful gel electrophoresis results before getting stuck into the much more temperamental PCR experiments.

3. Plates from water from the Brayford Pool incubating – planning on getting some prelim data on total viable counts from the pool on a more or less daily basis for Ryan, to help him plan sample sizes when he gets started. Also got the MLSA plates made to start culturing E. coli for Rosie.

4. Box of random fibre samples located and tidied a little, so back on with the plan of writing a book of images for forensic fibre analysis, and revisiting some of my final year students projects to see if I can get publishable data with a few more experimental repeats.

That’s my round-up – what about yours?

Hello there all I have just finished my…

Ryan Cheswick / / Uncategorized

Hello there all! I have just finished my final year studying Forensic Science (yay!) and i’m moving on to do a Masters by Research, which is focuses on Antibiotic Resistance in the Environment, this follows on from work I did in my third year project which was looking at Antibiotic Resistance in E.coli and looking for plasmids within resistant organisms. I will be starting around August time but should be hitting the labs sometime in July to get into things, at the moment I am taking a good break after finishing my degree 🙂
See you all soon!

Hi everyone Im not sure if i have…

Faris Ktit / / Uncategorized

Hi everyone,
Im not sure if i have met any of you but am looking forward to meeting everyone and of course being in the lab during the summer. I am a forensic science student who has just completed the first year and was keen into gaining some insight into research as i have never been around that sort of environment. Thankfully Nikki has given me the chance to come in to help out which i appreciate alot and sure you lot do also. As i have mentioned im looking forward to meeting everyone as im a friendly person despite my aggressive looking photo as it was difficult to smile during the early hours of the morning at which it was taken lol. Looking forward to reading all the blog updates. See you all soon!

Hey all I’m sure most of you know…

Soph Marie Scanlon / / Uncategorized

Hey all,
I’m sure most of you know me! I’ve just finished my second year studying biomedical science (Yikes!) and I’m doing UROS (The undergraduate research scheme) with Dr Crewe which I’m really excited to start! We are doing a project called ‘Further investigation into the usefulness of plasmid destabilisation against antibiotic resistance’. I’m really looking forward to seeing what its like to be a research scientist as its something i’m interested in doing when i’ve finished university. Thanks Nikki for setting this up and agreeing to let me work with you! This blog will be interesting! Really looking forward to Monday (11th June) when I start on the project and delving into it 😀 The subject seem’s really interesting!

Hello all soon to be summer lab buddies…

Barnaby Meek / / Uncategorized

Hello all soon-to-be summer lab buddies 😀

I’m Barnaby (Barney for short) and I have just finished my 1st year of Biomedical Science. I’m looking forward to gaining some competence in the labs and getting a feel for what it is like to be a real scientist doing research. I also think the process of blogging our experiences will be great, not only for communication purposes, but to provide a record of the daily successes and pitfalls of our research.

This summer is going to be a great learning experience, I’m sure; I can’t wait to get stuck in!

Hello my fellow science enthusiasts D I’m Sophia…

Sophia L. Smyth / / Uncategorized

Hello, my fellow science enthusiasts! 😀 I’m Sophia, a 2nd year-to-be Biomed and I am very excited indeed to get stuck into some lab research this summer!

Primarily, I’m looking forward to seeing the kind of work that I might be doing after completing my degree – whilst also getting some experience fit in to help prepare for next year (i.e. improve lab technique!) 🙂
I’m sure all of us will agree that it is very good of Nicki to help us out in giving us such a great experience, thank you very much! I look forward to how this blog side of the summer experience turns out and I hope to be useful (or at least not a hindrance) to the lovely lab staff during the projects. 🙂