SXR375 - Day 7

The last day :-(
Today no labs - we just have to give presentations. Breakfast - and wonder of wonders - you're allowed 5 items today!!! I only had 4, as I could hardly believe it!

Then we had an hour to tinker with our presentations. Ours was all finished, but I did have one addition. The only person who had published a paper on our plant, I'd sent an email to the previous day, asking him what pigments he'd found. He lives in New Zealand, but even so I thought it worth a shot. He replied in time for me to include his answer in the presentation. So I quickly inserted a slide in to show his thoughts on it. He hadn't found specific pigments, so we were one better than him. Of course he'd found other details that we referenced, so it was a good trade.

Anyway - then me being the computer geek, I took over the lecture theatre computer and got every ones presentations loaded up, in order and ready to go. I also had my handy dandy laser pointer which everyone used for advancing the slides and pointing things out.

The presentations went very well, and we finished in just over two hours. No one really had a problem, despite most people being full of nerves, and it was a really good session.

Then we had a quick last talk in the lab about the ECA and what was required, then back for our last lunch (fish and chips).
Then it was a few good byes and the whole thing was over. Slowly real life starts to fade back in. I went back to my room, because I'm in the same place next week - being a tutor on a different course. I made a start on the ECA (well just the headings - so a good 15 words from the 2500 required!) - hey its a start.
Then - pickup time for a nights sleep in a proper bed, then a similar thing to do next week!

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SXR375 - Day 6

Last day in the labs today. Breakfast first - the usual mix.

Then down to the labs, to complete our last few bits and pieces. We had a go at the full pigment spectroscopy, but with mixed results. We tried a couple of times, really grinding the leaves up hard with abrasive sand, but it always came out as a green colour and the spectroscopy showed a classic chlorophyll curve.

The the tutor gave us another idea, to mix in acid to try and release the attached molecules, and suddenly we got our nearly flat black spectrum that we wanted - hooray! 

Now we had the full story. So we finished off and went up to start work on the presentation.

We broke for lunch with about half of it done (sweet and sour chicken).

Back down to the lab for a quick briefing on what happens next, and we then worked some more on our presentation. Soon had it finished and then we went to try it in the big lecture theatre. 

A few more tweaks, then printed out the slides and went back to write some notes for the talk around the slides.

Tea coming up (lasagne and lemon meringue with ice cream - no soup), then - to disco or not to disco - that is the question?

Well in the end, we sat in the bar, drank and laughed a lot about presentation skills. It was a release I think from the weeks work.

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SXR375 - Day 5

Day five - project start day. We get to do our own thing a bit more now.
Breakfast, and at last the mushrooms make an appearance.

Then down to the lab - and to decide on the project. Our team of three want to investigate the black leaved flowers and see what they contain. We started off with an ambitious three pronged attack, wanting to measure photosynthetic activity of green v. black leaves, the pigments in the black leaves, and whether the flowers had any insect attractants. After a few false starts with the oxygen electrode we decided to leave that bit. It looks a bit fiddly, and our initial tests were a bit difficult to understand.

We go and fetch some fresh leaves and flowers and set to work. We do chlorophyll extraction first, to see if there are extra pigments there. However nothing unusual shows up.

Then we set to work extracting the other pigments. Anthrocyanins and flavinoids.

The pinky one is from the flowers, and the darker red from the leaves. We leave them evaporating and go and get some lunch (chicken fajitas - pretty good i have to say).

The afternoon brings mixed results. We get very poor TLC plates for the pigments - although the flavones come through. We rerun them a number of time but a smear is the best you could describe them as.
We attempt to use the UV spectrophotometer, but it appears to be a cranky old beast and ignores our best attempts. Then we notice that the visible light spectrophotometers dip into the UV a bit, and they are far easier to use in comparison. So we do a few runs of that, and get something we can talk about I think.
In the end - it looks like we have the data to talk a story, but there is one more thing that would help, and I ask Andy about full spectrum of the pigments.
He told us how it can be done, so that's one more thing for tomorrow.
Tea time (mushroom soup - good,  beef steak - ermmm passs, chocolate sponge - not the best ever). Then another two tutorials. One on our upcoming presentation to the group, and then another on our final piece of written work, and where the marks will be.

We were all a little tired now, and trudged back up the hill. The bar called, and most of us answered.

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SXR375 - Day 4

Another day. Another breakfast - much the same as all the others. This 3 items thing does make the plate look a little empty. Anyway - onwards. Its raining again on the walk down to the lab.

We start the lab by doing assays of chlorophyll and protein in the chlamydamonas that we used yesterday. This will help us plot our curves - although really we need a miracle for any curve to come out of ours!

We head for lunch (baked potato with cheese and ham) and then all meet up to go off to a garden, to look at some plants - with the ulterior motive of selecting species to do our projects on. I find some of my black leaved plants in there, which I'm considering doing a pigment analysis on.

After that - its back to the labs for some to finish up assays - collect data and do graphs and things. We do extensive surgery on our graphs - they still look awful, its a very noisy circuit we have so very difficult to pick out data.

Tea - crunchy minestrone soup (interesting idea - not sure it will catch on), chicken korma with rice and nan, and a rather good rhubarb and ginger fool (no not me).
The back to the lab in the pouring rain to discuss the last three days work, and see what data we have for the end of course assessment write up.
Then to the bar, for a light evening avoiding an impromptu quiz.

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SXR375 - Day 3

Day three. Another breakfast (fried egg, bacon and veggy thingy), and its started to rain.

The morning brings experiments on single celled green algae (Chlamydomonas reinhardtii). We want to get some of them, shine light through them and see how much oxygen they make at different light intensities, including none at all.

Well its a bit of a disaster really, and we're trying to recover some data. First the water bath wasn't switched on, so we had to wait for that to come up to temperature. Then something went wrong with our calibration of the oxygen electrode, so we had to wash it all out and redo that, about 15 mins gone. We then eventually got results, but the electrode gave very spikey traces, and the results were not really what anyone was expecting, except in general terms.

So lunch, and then we'll try and get some useful data out of the noise (pasta of some sort)

After lunch things were no better - our graph looked like a roller coaster.

Everyone elses graphs were perfect.

Oh well - there is always the bar to drown our sorrows... oh after tea (something vaguely porcine) a tutorial or two...
Now done, and some sorrows drowned. Tomorrow is another day.

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SXR375 - Day 2

Day two. A patchy breakfast, fried egg or scrambled, sausage and tomatoes. I was reliably informed by others on the table that they doubted anything organic went into the scrambled egg, so my choice of fried seemed good. Still cereal and toast is ok, and coffee was welcome.

Off to the lab, and our first task was to grind up some leaves. We chose petunia leaves, other groups did tobacco, pak choi, coleus and others. We then extracted the pigments in acetone and diethyl ether. Then we did some thin layer chromatography, try to separate out the pigments such as chlorophylls, lutein, violaxanthin and neoxanthin. Some nice bands separated.

We then tried to take some of the bands - and analyse them in spectrophotometer. FIrst time it didn't work - we had the tube the wrong way round. Second time looked better, but one of the peaks was in the wrong place.

Then just time to put some flowers in to stew in HCl before a break for lunch.

After lunch, we came back and did similar procedures with the extract from flowers. We were looking for flavones and anthocyanins, using similar techniques. We had a hitch when we put our first TLC papers in the solvent, which turned out to have too much acid in, and they all dissolved into mush! Anyway - after coffee break we redid things, and they worked much better.

More chromatography, and some absorption spectra helped us isolate pigments from the various plants we'd looked at. We collated the data - wrote it all down and then went to tea (roast beef and yorkshire pudding).

After that I attended a tutorial on photosynthesis and plant pigments, and another on giving presentations.

Then - to the bar!

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SXR375 - Day 1

Its a hot day. with the help of the family I've got registered, found my room, and unpacked just a little.

The family were with me, and they helped me label by books and name tag.

The room has a fridge in it, a desk and a bed. A few other things like a kettle and so on.

Still - I won't be in it a lot. Lots of time in labs, tutorials, eating, or in the bar.

We had a walk around the campus to locate the biology building.

Then the family left, and I sorted out my things. The course started with an introductory talk which covered various administrative things, and then we went down to the labs. We were introduced to the courses tutors and formed up into small teams. I found two others who thought I would at least not cripple their efforts. We then had a look at the range of plants they had on offer, which tomorrow we will be extracting chlorophyll and other pigments from.

After that - back to the hall for lunch and a coffee to keep things going.

Next there is a guest lecture on pesticides, so I'm off to that.

This was good - with a good discussion of issues involved in feeding the world, GM crops, organic produce and so on. We then retired to the bar, where I started a table that grew to about 8-9 people discussing a variety of topics. It was a good evening - hope the alcohol intake doesn't disrupt tomorrows labs!

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SXR375: Plants and Pigments - CMA

There is a CMA that has to be done before attending the school. You have to score 35% or more on this, to stand a chance of passing the course. Sneakily, although you can see why, you don't get the results until after the residential school.

Its 20 questions, all multi choice. However some are "choose the correct answer", some are "select up to 3 true statements", some are "find the two false statements" and some require work to be done, graphs to be plotted to get the answer. A few of them are based on research papers which we have a copy of, that we have to dig the results out of.

All in all, its not too bad. I think some of the questions are a little ambiguous, but I think I'll pass OK. One question that insults my sense of logic is "Select three correct answers" and we have A-F to choose from... except F's answer is "All of A-E are true". So if you choose this, doesn't that invalidate choosing 3?

I have a slightly freaky moment, when on the last 4 questions, I realise I've been using last years question paper rather than this years! Ooops - good job I spotted that.

Anyway - its gone now! Time to pack now - and remember to take my new white (well it is currently) lab coat!

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SXR375: Plants and Pigments

So yesterday a parcel arrived - it has in it the material for my next residential school coming up in July.
This is a 3rd level course investigating plants and pigments.

It arrives with

• A folder
• A folder insert
• A course description
• Some prereading material
• A DVD

The school is all about analysis of plants and the way they use pigments to control their photosynthesis and manage energy and light issues. There is a computer marked multi choice paper that has to be done before hand (online) which you have to pass to complete the course.

Then there is the school itself, which includes presentation of results, and then a write up to do afterwards. Looks to be fun, and this time I have to take my own lab coat, so have ordered one.

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