Three orders of magnitude

This past week, another doctoral student and I supervised a team of six undergraduate students as they navigated life as full-time researchers. 

We designed a project for them based on our research in cell-free protein synthesis and helped them through our usual protocols. At the end of the week, they submitted their lab book and gave a short presentation on their work.

I was a little worried because we had never tried to do cell-free protein synthesis reactions at this volume before. But it worked! We scaled up from micro centrifuge tubes to a small bioreactor - an increase of three orders of magnitude!!

We made over 200 mg of green fluorescent protein and we demonstrated that the geometry of the vessel we perform the reaction in has little impact on overall yield. 

I had tried not to get my hopes up for this week. I figured something would go wrong early on - a malfunctioning bioreactor or a broken bottle of expensive solution - but we managed to make it through unscathed! My team was careful and diligent. By the end of the week, they were all readily volunteered to perform the next step in the protocol. Their attention to detail and engagement can be seen in their positive results. I still can't believe it. (Three orders of magnitude!)

I'm a little sad that I only get to teach a class like this once. I'm so proud of my team and all that they've accomplished. I hope they had fun this past week and I hope they get high marks!