Omar Antonio Reyes Llerandi

A01196859

Lab Reflection
On the last Friday the first of February we attended to a high level
laboratory on Tec de Monterrey Campus Estado de Mexico. We went directly
on a school bus as soon as our current school day to the college were we did
the experiments. We arrived there at 3:30 hours approximately and we were
given about half and hour to eat some lunch before we started the
experiments. Finally, it was the hour to start the practice, we went up along
the biotechnology facilities into a big laboratory where we divided our entire
group into two smaller groups in order to be easy to work.

Obviously to enter the lab we were asked to wear a lab coat and some lab
gloves to avoid any kind of accident. The first activity we made was to
analyze a lot of kinds of microorganisms taken from many parts of the school
like the floor, the bathroom, the grass, the trash, etc. We had many
bacterias and fungal. The first technique we experimented with was a gel
electrophoresis

where

we

had

some

extraction

of

DNA

of

distinct

microorganisms and we mix it with distilled water which was full of proteins
and nutrients. With the help of a micropipette we mix both of these
components and later on we put the mix inside of a gel made out of agarose.
After this is was plugged in into an electric charge who created an electric
flow among the gel and the distilled water in order to separate the DNA
strands and be able to see it. We later on let it rest for about one hour and a
half for it to separate. After it with the help of a projector machine we were
able to finally see in a computer how the DNA was separated and displayed
in the gel. It looked something like this:

The second activity we did was made with the help of a bioreactor which is
commonly used to grow cells or tissues and that is used in the biochemical
industry. We started by just testing this bioreactor and making it flow at
different spins per minute. After this it was used to change the level of pH in
water inside the bioreactor. Finally, and the most interesting part was to add
fluorescein and alter

the

bioreactor

accommodate

was

way

the

it by removing some

impellers

to

avoid it crashing the

substance with

them. After this we

started making

the bioreactor to start

spinning at a

low rate and increasing this revolution per minute slowly until getting to the
highest rpm which was 2000. While we started increasing the revolutions per
minute the yellow fluorescent substance started separating into a higher
consistence lower part and a less concentrated upper part. Also while we
increased the revolutions per minute the bioreactor formed a swirl who
looked different between the two concentrations.
I enjoyed a lot attending this lab because Ive always liked these kind of
practices and experiments and it was amazing to attend to a professional
college laboratory with all the items necessary for any sort of experiment.