The coffee leaves collected in 2008 were kept a bit too long in moist sample bags. They were put on silicagel, yes, but it was the rainy season. Everything was wet. Nothing could dry, really. Not even the project manager’s underwear hanging from the Landcruiser’s rear view mirror. Maybe the freeze drying was not carried out soon enough. The leaves were black and not green. Some had started to mold. The leaves would not grind properly. The lysis buffer looked like coffee (when it should have been bright green). Today’s results of the Nanodrop Spectrophotometer did not come as a surprise: wet coffee samples are bad coffee samples. The extracted DNA was not pure and concentrations were low. Dry orchid samples (from a colleague) were good samples. To be continued next week, with fresh material.
Good DNA, bad DNA, earlier today
Oh well. Can you get access to a 454 sequencer? They want short stretches of DNA anyway.
:S the peak’s almost level.
Goodness, that has to be an experience getting coffee-coloured lysis buffer after grinding leaves in it. It also sounds really exotic—coffee and orchids!
Good luck with it next week!
I’m more interested in the freeze-drying of the project manager’s underwear.