Taking 1-step intsead of two.

As of late, there have only been a few things on my mind: the glorious weather, Physiological Ecology of Marine Algae, and 1-step Quantitative PCR.

Spring break ended with spring hitting Worcester with extreme velocity. All of the snow that fell before break has been replaced with highs well into the 60s. There are rumors of temperatures hitting the 70s or 80s next week.

Why yes, I'd love some sunshine while I read.

Aside from the end of this week, with temperatures dropping today and rain expected tomorrow, we've been blessed with sunshine and more warm weather. On Monday I got to spend some time outside while doing some reading during class. While we were given more time than needed to do the reading, I certainly will not complain about the amount of sunrays I was able to soak up while hanging outside. I've beginning to worry about the amount of work I have to do between helping to run two projects in PEMA and finishing up my own research, in addition to preparing presentations, writing my thesis, and giving a defense... all while the weather is getting really nice.

I could try shifting my sleep cycle so that I work a lot at night, sleep in, and enjoy the weather during the afternoon before going back into lab. I highly doubt this is something I'll try. Instead, I'll probably start packing killer lunches and having them on the green in the sunshine.

I have so much to do but I'm still waiting for cultures to grow up and things to be mailed in to retry some of my real-time experiments. I tried running some 1-step QPCR reactions recently since we had the kit on hand. 1-step QPCR makes the cDNA and amplifies it all in one reaction, rather than making the cDNA separately and adding it to the QPCR reaction. While this is definitely easier, saves time, and limits contamination, 1-step QPCR is not as accurate when it comes to estimating the amount of starting template in a sample. As determining the amount of relative template among samples of different test conditions is of the utmost importance to me, it looks like 1-step QPCR won't really fit into my plans any more. However, some initial results suggested my experimental lines of diatoms are behaving as expected (and see previously with normal QPCR), so that's really promising. Once I get a new QPCR kit in and some cells to analyze, my work should be all downhill from here (aside from heaps of lab work).

Watch the video below for a bit more on our beautiful weather and 1-step QPCR.