PCR power

Yes, so I am still working on my project, which will involve 27 primer pairs and 12 sea urchin individuals. If you do the math, that's 324 different base pair sequences. Here's the process: PCR, gel electrophoresis, DNA purification, specs, and sequencing. For 324 different tubes. Needless to say, it will take some time, but I am almost finished PCRing all the tubes. Yesterday, I did an 8 by 12 plate of PCR reaction. Once we could get it to work, I used an automatic pipette to alloquate the primer master mixes into the 96 tubes. Surprisingly, PCR involves more math than I thought. It wasn't difficult, but I was actually forced to use a calculator. WHen I am creating the PCR master mixes, sometimes I feel like I'm cooking, putting together a recipe.. 4 ul of sugar, 25 ul of water, and 750 ul of baking soda. Delicious. But like cooking, you have to be careful about not putting in the correct amount of each ingredient. PCR is a reaction that involves a lot of different components, and depending on how many tubes you have, you master mix will be correspondingly bigger or smaller. The lab even has its own blender- the tabletop vortex that mixes up the ingredients to make everything homogenous. Of course, all this "biological cooking" hasn't changed my mind about kitchen cooking... I still avoid it at all costs, but I am learning that scientists have to be alert and focused to get specific reactions like PCR right. If you're not careful, you could spoil the batch and waste ingredients while you're at it. Overall, it's been an interesting week.