Week 1 Lab: Pipetting

Pipetting & eGels

In this week’s lab, we were tasked with familiarizing ourselves with standard pipetting equipment. We utilized P20, P200, and P2000 micropipettes, along with petri dishes and glass slides. Having prior experience in a wet lab, it was fun to explore the equipment artistically.

I started by creating some “droplet art” on a glass slide using colored water.

I then decided to make a smiley face and a DNA strand in the same fashion, pipetting individual droplets of colored water and “streaking” them to create lines.

I noticed another labmate using petri dishes for her art. Given the hydrophobic coating on the plate, the droplets formed more uniform spheres that maintained their geometry better than on the glass slides. I proceeded to create another drawing on the petri dish.

Finally, we used an eGel, a piece of technology I had never seen before. I was thoroughly impressed—no loading buffer, no separate imaging box, and no dye required. The process was incredibly streamlined. Another classmate and I alternated pipetting the provided ladder sample and dH2O into the lanes of the gel. The eGel even allows for mid-run imaging, which I was delighted to take advantage of.

The first lab has definitely made me excited to get my hands on the rest of the equipment we will use in this class, and it provided a nice artistic lens through which to view a simple task like pipetting. :)

Gemini AI was consulted for formatting