Thursday 2 September 2010

Chromatography capers!

The general feeling of exhaustion continues but despite that it's been a busy day in the lab, at least for the machines.
While my protein sample sloooooowly travels through the vast capillary network on the chromatography machine I have been glued to a computer screen. Automation rules...well at least it would if I didn't have to keep running into the coldroom to swap over buffers. At 4 degrees it is practically arctic and I left my fur-lined snow boots at home!
I wash the lines through with lashings of salt to disturb the molecular interactions that transiently immobilise my mutant protein. Contaminants removed, all is looking good and more importantly, clean.
Two weeks and two days later I still have to check protein concentration and check purity. Each step in the process makes me increasingly nervous. Time is critical as samples degrade, some of my counterparts have worked around the clock...check under the office desks and you can find a duvet or two!

Tick tock.

A quick run through with ethanol to clean the instrumentation and home time beckons. No lab duvet shenanigans tonight.



QTDKVU3VQE2K

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