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Some control results! (Don't get excited, it's just a control...)

By Rosie Redfield on Wednesday, December 14, 2011
My collaborators have taken pity on me and sent me some of their control analysis data.  This is mass-spectrometry analysis of a control DNA sample I sent several months ago.

The GFAJ-1 cells this DNA was purified from were grown in medium without arsenic, so we don't expect to find any arsenic in the DNA.  This DNA was just used to test the methods they will use, but it also provides some measure of the purity of the DNA I sent them.  That's because this DNA hasn't been put through the CsCl-density-gradient purifications step that they'll use for the new DNA samples I sent a few weeks ago.

I'm going to have to put in a bit of work before I have any idea of what I'm looking at.  But I'm not complaining - this is exactly the part of science I like best.

2 comments:

  1. NotAnAstrobiologistDecember 15, 2011 at 2:05 AM

    Thanks for this teaser data Rosie, you are too cruel!

    Looking forward to seeing what happens.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousDecember 16, 2011 at 7:10 AM

    So is the DNA getting depolymerized by an enzyme or something? Are you only measuring individual dNMP's?

    ReplyDelete

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