Sequencing Facility Feild Trip

This morning was pretty  much the same. I woke up at 7:45 AM but I actually got out of my bed at 7:55 AM just because I was being lazy today. As soon as everyone got to class we took a field trip to a sequencing facility where they sequence DNA that is given to them. I thought it was interesting how they do DNA sequencing. We actually were going to work on DNA sequencing in class. After we went to the sequencing facility we went back to the lab to work on sequencing DNA and finding the mutant in the DNA. We found the mutant by looking to see if there was a dot to show that the genes were disagreeing and that told us what the mutant was. We translated the amino acid and mine was Arginine. The amino acid code for Arginine is CGU, CGC, CGA, and CGG. My mutant was called Thymine.

After the first part of that lab we went to lunch early. I ate cantaloupe and mac & cheese and it was good. I sat with Katherine, Eugenia, and Alexa. I really enjoyed Eugenia, who is from London, talking about the sport cricket and she told us that the ball they use is metal with leather rapped around it. It's kind of like a baseball but it has metal inside it and it looks like one too. She also said that she got hit in the jaw with one and she couldn't talk for a while.

When I went back to class we went to a lecture first and then  lab. In the lecture she talked about HIV and Drug Resistance. I learned that changing a selective environment can slow evolution of drug resistance. I also learned that virulence is how harmful a pathogen is to it's host. There was also a topic of Anti Retroviral Drugs. It controls the infection but can't cure it because HIV has a high mutation rate and Antiviral drugs target actively replicating viruses. In the second part of lab we did protein modeling. The steps we took were to make the protein more visible to see better. The purpose of this lab was to visualize how rifampicin bonds to the protein of the bacteria samples.

After class I went to the dorms and took a nap until 5 PM and then went to dinner. At dinner I sat with Oyin, Jimmy, Alexa, and Dani. We stayed there until 7:00 PM which was longer then usual but we had a very interesting conversation about our day and then we met someone named Barron who is leaving tomorrow with his program. He was nice, polite, and talked to us for a couple of minutes until he had to go back to his table. Then we left and went to the west lounge to sit down for a while until we all got our computers and came back to the lounge to do homework. That's what we are going to end the night with almost everyday but sadly Dani didn't come today which is fine because we know she has a lot of work to do for her class.