Day 8 - competent cells prepared by incompetent Scientists

Day 8 - competent cells prepared by incompetent Scientists

The morning was a bit relaxed as we only need to do PCR. Just put the PCR mixtures in the machine and wait for them to be done. Like usual, I used the waiting time to learn about Chinese as I left my Chinese text book in the lab. However, I didn't get any band for the PCR result. I guess I have either loss the enzyme or I loss the template... Sigh... I needed to redo it again....

The chapter that I learned for my Chinese lesson was about birthday so I announced my birthday to everyone in Chinese. My birthday is in August and unlike everyone, I hated my birthday. The incident that happened on my 18th birthday was still fresh in my mind. The feeling of being alone, dejected and self pity on that day had created a trauma on me. It was because none of my friends bothered about my birthday on that year hurt me so much. Wang Li suddenly said that he would organize an outing on my birthday.

In the afternoon, we learned about how to prepare competent cell for bacteria transformation. We just follow the steps and aliquot the cells which are ready to use into small eppendorf tubes and immediately freeze them by throwing it into liquid nitrogen. Every time we throw the tubes into the liquid nitrogen, we would heard a fizzle sound just like if we were frying something. The bacteria inside the tubes were immediately frozen and the liquid nitrogen emitted white vapor just like dry ice.