Last experiment?

Time for a little PhD update...this experiment above is brought to you fresh from the lab today. I have good news and bad news. Since my last update (August), I have been able to successfully clone and express my protein of interest. The cloning part was the rate limiting step since it took me like 4 attempts to get positive clones. I tested out this protein with its substrate and behold it has activity! I was so happy I screamed and screamed like a crazy woman. The next step was to add this protein to my cometabolism supernatants and see if my mystery metabolite is indeed the substrate of this protein. Lo and behold! it is! well at least for one of my chlorinated compounds. Above is the repeat experiment to confirm my result, the colour correspond to how much chloride is in the solution. Finally! after all these years I am finally able to identify at least one of the break down products. This work is now done and I can write it up in my thesis!

Now the bad news, despite all my attempts at making cell plugs and running PFGE these last few months, I have no good results. Well it depends on how you look at it. A wise scientist once said "there is no such thing as a failed experiment just undesired or unexpected results". I haven't been able to see plasmids in my transconjugant no matter how I optimize the protocols. The result is both undesired and unexpected! but what if this is the real deal? I can only speculate why this is the case and suggest further experiments. I'm out of time to do any more experiments. So I'm just gonna tell my supervisor I give up and pray he'll just accept it.

In terms of thesis writing, I haven't made that much progress - a page here and a page there. I can see it coming together though. According to my associate supervisor at my recent progress interview, I have a few good stories to tell in my thesis. I'll be so happy when my supervisor finally say I don't have to do any more experiments, fingers crossed as I hunt him down to talk. I can just see myself writing from home full time and feeling really hopeful that I can submit on time too.

***EDIT: right after I posted this I found my supervisor and had a chat with him. He was very encouraged by the result above and after some more talking he said "right I'm not going to lie to you, you definitely have enough for a thesis. That's it, no more experiments, you're done congratulations". That was like music to my ear, the sweet sound of no more lab work. Hooray!!!