Adsorption

Last time I talked about making the transition between training and independence in the lab. Today, the shift occurred! My activities currently involve preparing my first batch of mineral oxide (specifically, corundum) and checking it by XRD to make sure it's clean and ready to use. While that's going (dialysis typically takes about 3 days before drying and XRD which tack on at least another day), I'm also performing an amino acid adsorption isotherm with L-aspartate and some corrundum that someone else already prepared. Adsorption isotherms tell us something about how amino acids, (in this case, the adsorbate) the building blocks of proteins, interact with mineral surfaces; something that's important to understand if we think the first protocells relied on mineral surfaces as structural supports (scaffolds) and catalytic surfaces (to facilitate chemical reactions that might not otherwise occur).

Amino acid adsorption isotherms generally take 2 days to run (because of the 12-hour adsorption step which we generally run overnight) and analyze. Although the procedure doesn't seem any more complicated than those I'm more familiar with in molecular biology, it's my first attempt at doing this particular reaction on my own and I have no idea how it will turn out. Any number of things can go wrong when you are doing an experiment on your own for the first time. Technical errors, computer/equipment malfunctions and simple lack of experience (esp. troubleshooting) are only the beginning.

As I'm writing this entry on the bus, on my way home from the lab, my L-aspartate is supposedly busy adsorbing to tiny grains of corrundum on my bench. First thing tomorrow, I'll have to remember to turn on the hot water bath. UW is currently on an energy-saving kick so that means the baths all get turned off in the lab at night and the darned things take FOREVER to reach 100oC! I don't know about you, but I certainly don't want to wait around for it all day! At least I have everything else set out & ready to go so I won't be scrambling to find and/or label things.

Hmmm... The sky's a funny color. It looks like we're about to get dumped on! I just hope I make it into my building before it does!