Day 11: PCR - no, that doesn't stand for Pretty Cool Reseach, though it could!

Morning two of waking up in my own apartment and it was just as pleasant as the first! I woke up again to see Yalin sleeping in bed after getting back from work at about 5am. I overslept a bit, so I hurried out the door but was still able to make some time for oatmeal and a very watery homemade chai latte. When I got to work Andrew (Dr. Mitchell) said we were starting off the day with the next step of the Barcoding Process, PCRs. PCRs, otherwise known as polymerase chain reactions is a very intricate process that luckily a machine does most of! We went up into a different lab in the super sterile clean area to prepare the samples which basically means adding a bunch of different chemicals, binders, and catalysts to actually sol and replicate the DNA. Once all the proper chemicals are added we put it in a machine to do the actual reactions which involved three major steps: denaturation, annealing, and extension - all done at different temperatures for different lengths of time to produce copies of the DNA. The process takes about 2 hours so while we waited we went out to lunch with the other volunteers in the Entymology Dept. Now, I am by far the youngest volunteer (by at least 20 years) but it was really fun talking with everyone. I was sitting next to a woman that's volunteered for over 5 years and she ended up being a flute tutor! Her granchildren are all in band and her oldest grandson recently traveled to the US with his band to play in a concert which was so cool. I had a slice of banana bread at lunch which was absolutely delish toasted with butter and passed on the lattes everyone seemed to be having because they were ridiculously expensive. When we got back to the lab we retreived the samples from the PCR machine and did what's called a Gel experiment that tests whether or not we got suitable DNA. The test is really pretty and creates kind of a rainbow effect in the otherwise clear gel - it was probably my favorite part of the day. On the way home I stopped by pizza hut to get a $5 pizza mia! I didn't feel much like cooking, and let's be real, who can pass up The Hut?! On my way home I also noticed that there was a HUGE American Express building in downtown and observed that no other major credit card company had a building (that I could see) in downtown Sydney. I found it fairly ironic that of all the credit card companies AMERICAN express was the one doing the best in AU. haha. I went home to enjoy the pizza and once again found myself in the living room with two of the boys while I did some laundry. One of them, Jonathan, saw me sitting on the floor to charge my laptop and actually went and got me an extension cord which was really really nice of him. He also taught me how to use their TV since the remote is tricky and helped me to navigate the kitchen a little better than I was previously. I learned than Anton, the other male roomie is attending UTS in Sydney for engineering and he can actually play the guitar quite well. Jonathan made a little bit of small talk with me which I appreciated, but was mostly into watching The Simpsons on his desktop computer. Mostly they were quiet, sometimes stopping to talk to each other in Chinese, but it was kinda nice just being able to chill out. It's a little strange not having Yalin around in the evenings. On the one hand its awesome basically having my own room, but on the other it could be interesting to see how all these boys warm up to me. LOL. Who knows, maybe we'll all be besties ;)

Pretty American Express Building!!

The Harbor I walk by on the way home.. There was a lightning storm I was trying to snap a pic of, but unfortunately my eyes and my hands didn't move fast enough to snap a pic. To the right of the end of the pic is the Sydney Aquarium and Animal World and to the left is the Maritime Museum :) Nice walk homeeee.