Today we follow LiHong on her day.
Her part of the steps will seem familiar. She does dialysis, filtration and rotary evaporation. Lastly she uses DLS (Dynamic Light Scattering) to characterise the protein.
Firstly, she completes her dialysis:
Carefully she, removes the remaining samples still in the dialysis bag.
She then filtrates the collected solution to obtain the filtrate residue
The clear filtrate still contains some protein, so she pours it into a round-bottom flask and put in an evaporator
The residue in the filter paper will be left in the oven to dry and the solution in the rotary evaporator will be left to run until residue appears.
We then followed LiHong to her training. Students have to apply for them to get a licence so that they can use the machines for protein characterisation.
During the course, she learns to start up the hardware and software, if not the computer may crash if the wrong steps are taken.
She learns how to select the appropriate apparatus to use for different conditions.
She also learns how to read graphs and recognise anomalies in the graphs. A one common problem was due to dust and the trainer taught her how to spot them. The ability to recognise graph also will tell her if she is using the appropriate equipment or she should use a different machine to characterise the protein.
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