Around this time last year, I joined a research group that had the goal of discovering different aspects of HIV/AIDS treatments. When I came into the lab, there were already two students working on a project looking into the prevalence of a mutation that would make a person less susceptible to contracting HIV. In order to see if a person has this mutation, we performed a PCR which synthetically makes DNA and then ran a gel. The people with the mutation will have an extra band that is physically visible to us.
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| The band that shows below the first band represents the mutation. |
When our group began testing, we ran into a huge problem. The gels, which should have shown up as pretty and clean cut as the one picture above, showed up more like the one below.
This was a huge disappointment and the gels we ran continued to show up "blank" until just recently. Overcoming this hurtle took nearly a hear, but was a huge accomplishment that gives me hope for the project in the future.
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