WELL. Today I ran my first two test and I looked at the results. I was super discouraged because I have mixed up which sample were which; furthermore, even when I sorted that out, my data still wasn't too solid. I was so frustrated with this. I have worked really hard and been doing a lot of tests. I didn't want to just start making mistakes this massively. So I went to Tom, defeated, preparing for a verbal lashing about how terrible I was at running tests.
He looked at my data and casually said, "Oh, looks like you got some Primer Dimers". Essentially the reaction went wrong and there's nothing I can do about it. And he looked over my data and thought it looked good and explained that it was pretty solid still. I started to feel better, but then he took it a step better.
He told me that I was doing a very good job (he later called me brilliant) and that I was producing very good data, something that undergrads, Masters students, and even Ph.Ds struggle with. Basically, I should just relax because there isn't really a "wrong answer". I was on cloud 9.
Nice job, Thad! If you felt that good being on "could 9" imagine how great it would feel to be on "cloud 9!"
ReplyDeleteWhat are "Primer Dimers?" Why did the reactions go wrong? If the data was good, what did it tell you?
Mr. Boehm
Instead of the Primers attaching to the cDNA, they attach to each other and do PCR. Therefore there only lots of copies of the primers attached.
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