A Little Late, but Still Worthwhile......The Story of My Research
This blog was supposed to be about how my research is coming along; however, due to the fact that I am writing this slightly later, my research is actually completed. However, I can still talk about the ups and downs that I faced.
In general, my research went quite smoothly. For every SNP I used the same protocol, so towards the end, I actually became fast at completing SNPs. For example, when I first began I could only complete about three SNPs a day, doing then one-at-a-time. The last day, I completed eleven SNPs, doing them three-at-a-time. Its amazing how quickly one is able to pick things up. I was only in the lab for seven weeks, but the overall genotyping procedure became almost second nature.
One main complication I faced multiple times while doing research was that once I had made plates for a SNP, ran them in the PCR blocks, and scanned them, the analysis plot would look messy. This told me that something, at some point in the whole process, had gone wrong. Usually the problem was that the plate had amplified too much. Sadly, the only way to fix this problem is to make a whole new set of plates and run them on a completely different setting on the PCR blocks, and then scan them all over again. If the problem was that the DNA hadn’t amplified enough, the same plates could just be put back on the PCR blocks for more cycles; however, this was slightly worried me because there was always the risk of running them for too many cycles and then going from too little amplification to over amplification. Luckily, I only had to remake plates for two or three SNPs.
So, this was the main story of how my overall research went. After all the SNPs were genotyped, I only had one that had had an unfixable problem and had to be thrown out of the analysis. Once the statistician, Melanie, told me the results, I was happy. There had always been the chance that none of the SNPs would have an association with low birthweight or preterm birth. Luckily, though, some of mine did, so I actually had some pretty graphs to display on my poster.
~~~Helen
