biotechnology!!!

so, no joke, i'm a biotechnologist now. i love it. today i get to zero period and the package we were waiting for had arrived! so now we could finish our lab.

we had started this lab by making a cocktail of enzymes, buffer, and lambda DNA. three different enzymes, one control. these were in microliters too. we used micropipets and everything. they look a little like this:yeah. theyre nifty. you set it to how much you want to suck up, then it automatically will take in only that much. its pretty nice. especially considering were talking wayyy less that water droplet size. well we make these cocktails and then we put them in a gel electrophoresis machine thingy. which looks like this:

and then, you load the gels (which looks like a flat rectangle of jello with holes from a comb on one side.) you load them by micropipetting the enzyme/DNA into the holes from the comb. then putting the side with the DNA in it on the negative(black) side because DNA has a slightly negative charge and will travel through the gel matrix to the positive side, the smaller pieces of the DNA being the farthest travelling when you pump it with about seventy five (it varies) volts of electricity. then you stain the gels with ethidium bromide, which binds to the phosphate bonds of DNA. then when you shine ultraviolet light through them the DNA lights up. heres the results of my experiment! seriously i took this picture of my DNA results today. its fascinating. and super cool!!!!

the bands are the DNA. ISNT IT COOL!?!?!?!??!

by the way. this was more for my pleasure than for anyone elses, so sorry-ish. well no. but i thought it would be a nice touch. and if it didnt make sense, like i was just rambling, which i was, it makes sense to me so thats all that matters. :)