Expectation vs. Reality



I never thought the day would come when I felt literally emotionally attached to my results, but it did on the last day of Mod2 when we saw the ethanol production levels. I was so perturbed! Not only were there no clear observable trends, but the only clear point was that the cells with the CRISPR system in the optimal conditions were simply the worst at producing ethanol out of every single sample. 

Thinking I would get ahead, I pre-wrote much of my introduction, hypothesis, some discussion points, and even pre-planned my figures. But alas- come Thursday, I had to remake that all to tell a story that made sense with the data we got.

One thing I will say is that if I did learn anything about scientific communication, I learned the importance of keeping track of your work so that people in future years can use it! A big part of our data analysis ended up depending on the work of those before us who had targeted the same gene, and it was so helpful when their data was organized well and labeled correctly, and equally stressful and frustrating when it wasn't.

It also became very clear that the in silico parts of our experiment were some of the most important ones! Going into Mod 3, I will definitely keep in mind the help that technology can provide and the hindrance it can be if used incorrectly. 

I'm looking forward to working with the batteries in Mod 3 and getting the chance to design our own experiments- hopefully this design process goes more smoothly than our gRNA design did!

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