Well the research project Paul and I have been working on for since February did not work out like we planned. I think the one thing we learned from our experiment is that what the literature says is not always reliable and that lab gremlins do exist. After getting some exciting preliminary results at the beginning of April, we tried our DNA nanotube length experiment again at different temperatures and with a better design. That however, didn’t work as we found that the phase transition temperature in the literature isn’t quite right and that several of the oligonucleotide strands that we use to make the nanotubes went bad due to lab gremlins or sublimation, we’re still testing. We were hoping to have really good results showing that we could make really long nanotubes by nucleation for the URCA colloquium May 19th. Instead what we have is results telling us that we have a interesting, albeit unpractical, way of measuring the phase transition temperature for these nanotubes, and that that temperature is lower then what we expected. But on the bright side I now have a really exciting summer project lined up in the same lab! Look for post about that next.
~Alex
