[-Sunday, February 01, 2009-]

My reply! Hehe.

Morning Prof,

I'm very happy that i was able to learn a new hybridisation assay through screening. Previously, the only hybridisation assay i know off is through the ****. Both *** and *** are actually using the same principles to detect products qualitatively by generating the signal strength through biotin-labelled amplicons and avidin. However, i am still quite surprised that the working master mix of the *** is unable to amplify efficiently after it was kept for a certain period of time. My only deduction is that Mn2+ which i had added, actually activated the Reverse Transcriptase, thus, reducing the lifespan of the enzymes present in the master mix. While i had just started to familarize myself with the screening, i understand that there are many house-keeping matters which i have to learn such as patient samples processing. I find that these are actually the most important aspect of diagnostic work which involves thousand of samples every year and we may have to check back on the past year results asap when required. Hopefully, i will learn to be more systematic.

For norovirus work, i will have to thank ** as i had to trouble him via email on the locations of the reagents and controls. Without him, i won't be able to start the experiment in the first place.

As for the Human Adenovirus (HAdV) project, i had run a gel electrophoresis on my 2nd experiment. The degenerate primer is able to pick up the positive patient sample however, there is a non-specific band at the top. Since we will be using a TaqMan probe-based assay, the non-specific band "may" not be a problem at all. Hopefully i will be able to show Prof the gel photos next week so that i can confirm my next step which is to start cloning of plasmid standards for sensitvity test. **** had also reminded me that i should start considering which platform i have to use for optimisation of the real-time assay. LC seems to be the only platform which i can use since ABI and rotor-gene are heavily used daily.

For my M.Sc, i had not yet started the project as Dr **** is currently busy designing the primers and probes. Currently, i am reading project-related journals to familiarize myself with the experimental studies done by other researchers. Last week, Dr ** and Dr **** had come down to discuss on the project with me. I am still waiting for Dr ****'s instruction for now as i need to go down to his lab to assemble a detection kit for Dr **. Meanwhile, i am preparing the application for graduate study and hopefully, we will be able to summit the application to NUS by March.

Thank you for your wonderful email. Your reply really encourages me alot. I am very happy and all the colleagues are really nice working with. I hope that i will be able to learn as much as possible.

Happy Chinese New Year and have a nice weekend!

Yours sincerely,
Chun Kiat
"Never ask why i love you, just accept that i do." || 11:42 AM