I really dislike PCR. There. I said it.

OK, maybe I don’t really dislike PCR, but I don’t like when experiments don’t work. I find it hard to acknowledge the fact that doing a PhD is 10% intelligence and 90% persistence..life is very different in industry; if it doesn’t work, you leave it, or try one other thing to make it work.

Academic research is very different.. it brings to mind the phrase “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try and try again”. However, I had made a monumentally ridiculous transcription error (see what I did there!). Having had the PCR master mix recipe in my book (written by my PI for me), I had somehow managed to re-write this but during the copying over from one page to another, make a mistake in the volume of MgCl2 to add.. It went from 30uL to 5uL although I have no idea how I could have possibly done this..

Anyway, long story short, four failed PCR runs later, I decided to double check the master mix total volume..which didn’t add up, so decided then to check my PIs master mix and found the potential problem. the only other problem is that I have now spent hundreds of pounds on new reagents that I might not have even needed in the first place!!! My fingers and toes are crossed for tomorrow when Lucy kindly runs a gel for me to confirm amplification..picture to follow!

On a brighter note, I was accepted for a poster presentation for the OMIG meeting at Gregynog on the 12-14 March (tomorrow!!). So, five drafts of my poster later, and I picked up my final copy, perfectly printed (as far as I could tell after a quick glance) in A1 for presentation on Thursday (picture to follow too!). The hire car will be with me about 9am, leave mid-day and pick up Kirsty on the way through to Gregynog..looking forward to getting there and having the two course dinner 😀 (simple things 🙂 )

I finally met my first year undergrad MEDIC students this week too – in four groups, I gave a presentation of my PhD project in brief, and what the students are going to be doing as part of their practical project that I proposed a few months back. They all seem really excited to be doing it which is great, although not many of them knew much about microbiology, or candidosis..they will learn pretty quickly though I’m sure!

DM