I just found out this week that months and months of work that I had been doing on the Stipeae would now have to come to an end due to the fact that there is not enough money to pursue it any further. I have been working on this particular group since June and have really enjoyed my time working with them even though it has been somewhat of a challenge throughout the entire process. I thought because I am sad and frustrated right now that I would do a recap of the past several months of my life as pretaining to the lab. I began in June doing work on the Stipeae which is a tribe of grasses. Mary (who is my boss) had spent the from November to March in Australia working on this group and others and obtained samples of the Australasian Stipeae to come up with a phylogeny of the australasian samples. Phylogeny deals with the evolutionary background of a plant species. So these samples would help in establishing a (ancestral) tree for this particular group. I was asked by Mary when she got back if I would be interested in helping her on this project as well as others. So in June I started beginning to extract the DNA from the plant specimens that were brought back. These samples were packed in silica gel which helped to dry them out completely and keep them dry so the DNA doesn't degrade any more. The extraction process started offf really good. This didn't last long due to the fact that a change in plastic tubes halfway during it caused some extra stress. There are several things that happen during the extraction process. I obtained this simplified process from Wikipedia.
1-Breaking the cells open, commonly referred to as cell disruption, to expose the DNA within, such as by grinding or sonicating the sample.
2-Removing membrane lipids by adding a detergent.
3-Precipitating the DNA with an alcohol — usually ethanol or isopropanol. Since DNA is insoluble in these alcohols, it will aggregate together, giving a pellet upon centrifugation. This step also removes alcohol-soluble salt.

Or in other words, the samples are weighed and then placed in a small tube. A nickle bee bee is also placed in the tube. Then the samples that we are going to extract go through the disruptor which in simple terms it shakes the samples at very high speeds to break up the material.

The next parts of the extraction process has a lot of little technical steps that may come across as boring so I won't tell you everything. The main steps are we use chemicals to lyse or break open the cell and another set of chemicals to seperate all the extra stuff in the cell from the DNA. These chemicals are called buffers which is a substance that help facilitate a reaction but at the same time resists changes that occur during the reaction so it doesn't combine with the stuff in the reaction. So by the end of the process we have a vial of DNA. We then put it through a spectrophotometer and run a gel to test for the quality of the DNA. The polymerase chain reaction is the next process that we underwent. In this process which has several steps we amplify or enhance the DNA and then send it to the CIB for Fragment analysis. After we get if back from them we have the sequence of DNA which we then have to align so that the sequences line up. In order to do this we look at graphs called chromatographs to see what is actually happening in the sequence. The highest peak in the graph represents usually what is found in the sequence of DNA. This is just a simplified view of what I do at the lab. I know it is probably boring to most but I find it a very fascinating process. I will just have to deal with the fact that disappointment is a part of my job now. That is the nature of science. To try to find answers to questions but never really obtain those answers. The answers we receive will just lead to move questions. It's a fascinating process. I have to give up for now and not receive an answer.