Halloween has ended and November has begun!

It is an extremely busy time here in the Williams Lab as we all prepare to finish the final stretches of our semester work while also making headway on our theses.

Alex finally fixed ChIP! Due the suspicion that the beads exhibit non-specific binding activity, Alex and Larissa replaced the beads with a new type in their new ChIP trial. It seems that the new beads are working and Alex is extremely excited to move to the next step to investigating Nfe2. However, she also wants to further optimize ChIP process since the signal is not as strong.

Maddie gave a presentation as to what she has been doing the past semester. It is exciting to hear her project’s progress as well as looking forward to more awesome images from the new light sheet microscopy. In addition, Maddie’s project might also pan out to introduce in-situ hybridization.

Jacob is still as hardworking as ever in the lab. He continued to be better at microinjecting fish (despite some bumps along the way) as well as making good progress on morphological scoring. It seems that there were significant differences in morphology when the fish were treated with pro-oxidants. We should hear more from Jacob next week.

In terms of my project, I am excited to be finishing up the bioinformatics section and moving on to molecular cloning. Larissa provided me with preliminary information as to what I will be doing in the lab, and it looks like the project will be more hands on and a lot more fun (and frustrating, probably). With regards to finishing up the bioinformatics section, I am surveying the literature to find gene targets that are involved in implicated Nfe2 processes such as hematopoiesis and otic vesicle development. Then I am cross referencing that to the gene lists that I’ve generated so far. Even though alas2 did not show up in my cross time point analysis, other genes such as cfap70 are definitely there.
The semester is ending and so will the year. Elections are coming up and Williams Lab will still move forward even during the apocalypse. Stay tuned!