Week1
I rode the bus down to the lab and arrived at 10 am. I got another tour of the lab and Charles (my graduate student) explained every poster in the hallway to me. I took so many notes! Then I watched Charles do a gradient purification of the HIV virus.
Gradient purification is done to get different concentrations of a solution separated. Imagine a drink like the one below. In order to get its appearance liquids with different densities must be added. While our gradient was not a delicious beverage its display was very similar.
We treated the virus with a special compound called KR13. Its is a molecule that the lab developed in order to inhibit the infection of HIV virus, by disabling its Env (surface proteins), which make initial contact with cells. Charles' experiments are done in order to figure out what KR13 did to the virus and why it isn't infecting cells.
So in order to figure this out Charles put different concentrations of KR13 with the virus to see if particular proteins are being more or less disabled when exposed to the different concentrations. The samples with more KR13 were more dense and sunk to the bottom while the samples with less KR13 laid in the higher levels like the drink above.
Next Week we will fix the virus (not because its not broken) and begin some assays!
-Jada
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