W2D3

Today we began with some plans for aesthetic work to be done to masters hall. This involves a lot of poster renovation and updating. I then got out some leftover DNA samples from my work last summer for Ben and Fash to analyze. They used diluted versions of their calibration standards from yesterday to calibrate the spectrometer, and then attempted to determine the DNA and ion concentrations. We found that there was actually a few errors in their calibration series, but they were still able to obtain decent results. I also spent some time today educating myself on osmotic pressure, because many of the series I will be soon looking at deal with PEG and osmotic pressure. I found one article that suggested that divalent cations could cause attractive forces between DNA molecules under proper solution conditions. No such attractive forces were found with +1 ions.