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Slide #132

The gel electrophoresis indicates that there is RNA present in both of the mutant and wild type samples.  However, the noticeably fainter bands in the wild type lane indicate that a lower amount of RNA was loaded into this well.    When the microarray was sent back to us from Davidson College, there was not enough data to analyze it.  The gel indicates that error was made in to apportioning of the RNA into the wells.  The RNA may have also become contaminated while working with it due to talking by the researchers and accidental mishandling of the RNA.  To complete further research on the yeast studied in this year's lab, it would be best to ensure that all surfaces that come into contact with the products and slide are as void of RNA as possible by wiping them down.  It would also be advisable for gloves to be changed often and no talking among the researchers.  Another possible source of error is the light that was in the room when labeling the slides.  Computer screens were on, allowing light to hit the slides and may have been able to degrade the dyes.  However, we feel that contamination is the greatest source of error in this initial experiment.

Slide #106

In Table 1 we show and give a brief overview of the fourteen genes analyzed by our group. These genes relative expressions, given by a red:green ratio are shown in Table 2 found in the results section of this web poster. Particularly interesting to this study is the relation between zms2 and zms1 mutant and wildtype genes. The wildtype expresses more than the mutant in both zms1 and zms2.  This is expected because these were the two genes that were knocked out for the microarray analysis.  All of the other genes also showed this pattern of higher wild type expression compared to the mutant. 

In Image 5, we clustered all of the genes in Table 2 with other slides using hierarchical clustering.  Slides #107 and #131 were used for the comparisons.  The group that we formed from these did not show as many correlations between the genes as we had expected.  However, ZMS1 expressed similarly to three of the other genes, although it did not for the ZMS2 and ZWF1 genes.  We can conclude that the ZMS1 gene may be in the same area of the genome as the three genes that were similar.  It might be possible to conclude that the ZMS1 gene does not have an effect on the expression of ZWF1, as hypothesized.  However, further microarray analyses would need to be performed to further accept this conclusion.  Nowadays, it takes upwards of 8 microarrays for a researcher to be published and have his or her data recognized because of the difficulty in obtaining accurate results.

To improve upon these results, we would want to take the precautions mentioned in the first paragraph to ensure that the RNA is not contaminated.  If the results wanted to be futher examined then more microarrays should be performed on this data.  It would also be interesting to knock out some of the other oxidative stress genes to observe their effects on some of the ones chosen.