Breaking The Hiatus!!!

It takes me 13 minutes to walk from the house I'm renting to the Proteomics Lab in USM. No kidding, IT IS 13, DREIZEHN MINUTEN. Sure I keep track of my time travel and yet that does not include the time it takes me running on my two feet every day to grab something for lunch and dinner along Sungai Dua. Lost track of that a few days ago cuz my stomach was craving for food, totally had me in its spell. With that, I guess I can take it every day here is like running a marathon. There hasn't been a day which felt tireless for me. And the funny thing is, I at first was intent on keeping this blog updated for at least every two days but dang I guess that is juz too much for me too take now. Look out, I might throw up already. lol.

You muz be wondering what I've been doing for the past week. Awrite, I'll tell ya. I've been assigned with a research project that needs me to extract protein from a type of shrub which in Malay is called Capa or also scientifically known as Blumae balsmifera. I am really laZ to type what I've been doing. But I'll leave you guyz with some nice shots in the lab.

June 5. Learned to extract protein(the theory is as simple as the extraction theory we learned in Jean Geankopolis' Unit Operations, only that this concerns living things and most of the time is very tedious. You're always told to disinfect, disinfect and disinfect) from lean chicken meat, make the mini gel, and run the 1D Electrophoresis on Powerpac. In some ways I think it's really funny cuz you have to like spray a solution of 70% alcohol at various times and keep the cut chicken meat in a box of ice to make sure the proteins do not get denatured or attacked by the microorganisms in the air.

June 9. Protein extraction carried out on Capa leaves. The leaves were freeze-dried with Liquid Nitrogen(LNO2). You won't believe juz how COLD this baby is(btw, it is transparent for those who haven't seen LNO2 before). The crackling sound it makes when it comes into contact with the leaves makes you wonder what it would do to your fragile skin. The leaves were then crushed into powder with a mortar and a pestle. Make no mistake, the leaves were first washed and dried in the oven at 30C. And the whole day of June 8 was actually wasted with washing the leaves juz so you know.

June 11. Do I still need to tell you what that instrument I posted below is? The last picture at the bottommost however is the gel I've been talking about that had been stained with coomasie brilliant blue and destained with methanol. The protein bands aren't that clear in the pic.

June 12. I had no time to snap photos. BZ discussing with the gardener whom I call SIFU about the Capa leaves, grinding the leaves, making the mini gel for 1D electrophoresis, and running the electrophoresis analysis. The only thing I managed to capture from my SEG705 is this pic below.