May31
Posted on May 31 by
Summer research is a magical time in the lab for Dr. Gerdon and research students. The stress of the semester starts to fade away and there’s finally enough time to take a deep breath, focus your attention to research, and let your mind wander towards new ideas. Summer research is a time to put your head down and power through a big list of experiments and it is a time for using your creativity to dream up a new experiment or new approach. Dr. Gerdon has been helping Alex come up with a new strategy for isolating mineral product for IR analysis and he’s tried a few one-off experiments with calcium carbonate mineralization. Here’s an interesting experiment where Dr. Gerdon inadvertently mineralized calcium carbonate on the surface of a glass slide using a 96 well-plate. Maybe not very useful, but...
May31
Posted on May 31 by
Now that the 2018-2019 school year has come to an end, summer research has begun! Alex and Stephanie are working on optimizing the conditions for their calcium carbonate experiments. Stephanie, specifically, has been working on choosing between optical density and absorbance as a way of measuring the kinetics of calcium carbonate mineralization and how DNA affects it. Absorbance would be more sensitive but doesn’t have a flat baseline while optical density has a flat baseline but too much noise. Which method will Stephanie end up going with? Stay tuned....
May09
Posted on May 9 by
The end of the semester is upon us and that has brought so many distractions from research and from regular blog posts. This is rightfully so, of course, because classes must come first! Still, the group was able to get together to celebrate the end of this academic year with a group picture and a trip to Tasty Burger. Thanks for a great semester of research! Let’s carry all of those experiments into the summer with Stephanie and Alex, and an occasional visit from Kassidy, Dianna, Amanda, and Logan. An even bigger thank you is in order to the seniors, Emma, Jake, and Marielle, for their hard work over the years! See you at...
Mar28
Posted on Mar 28 by
Marielle has been working hard this semester trying to adhere collagen hydrogels onto gold surfaces. Last week’s attempted experiment left her puzzled as there was no gelation of the collagen solution on the gold plate. This week, Marielle revised the experiment adding a positive control and another method for dropping the collagen solution onto the gold plate. Marielle was pleased to find positive results as the new method allowed for visual confirmation of the gelation of the collagen as seen in the picture. Since Marielle has been working towards this goal all semester, she couldn’t help but feel excited about these...
Mar21
Posted on Mar 21 by
As Emma continues with the affinity project at the tail end of her senior year, she is reminded of one of the first lessons learned in research. There is no such thing as a failed experiment. Emma is now trying to further explore the selectivity of the DNA aptamers by running mineralization experiments for set amounts of time. The mineral produced in those experiments can then be tagged with the DNA aptamers, hopefully identifying the form of calcium phosphate present. As these experiments are being tried, the method has to evolve as problems arise and are then...
Mar12
Posted on Mar 12 by
As his days of undergrad are coming to an end, Jake is working on side-projects related to his previous work. He is analyzing the secondary structure of the G-quadruplex that forms in the DNA aptamers in the presence of different cations. Based on literature and previous results, he hopes to find some trends that correspond to the mechanism that will be presented in a publication that is soon to come. To analyze the folding of the secondary structure, Jake will use Circular Dichroism at the Instrumentation Center at Boston University. Collaboration between labs is very beneficial in undergraduate research as not all instruments are available at hand. Becoming more collaborative is a very useful skill and will serve Jake well as he leaves college and starts a new job after...
