October 25th post

Greetings once again everybody… I once again forgot that saving the post does not necessarily publish it for the public to see it. Oops J!

At the moment research has improved since my last post. I have been working with the Apollo machine and I seem to have worked out its kinks and occasional hiccups. I must admit the whole issue with this piece of equipment has severely delayed the research goals that I had discussed with my mentor at the beginning of the semester. The free radical analyzer is a fragile piece of equipment and it depends on the perfect interconnection of a diverse amount of factors for it to work properly. I wish the Apollo was as manageable as a pH meter or a spectrophotometer. But up to the moment that technology is still in its perfection phase; so I will learn from my mistakes and proceed with my planned goals.

Due to the unforeseen delays in my research, I consider myself to have completed only 50% of my objectives for this semester. At the moment I am beginning my kinetic experiments with the synthesis reaction of sulfmyoglobin. I plan to study the kinetics of five reactions, in these the [myoglobin] will remain unchanged (≈ 15µM). I will conduct the reactions in presence of oxygen and I will not be using hydrogen peroxide as a catalyst. The reactant concentration that I will be altering will be [H₂S]. This way, the proportions of myoglobin to hydrogen sulfide for the five reactions will be as follows: 1:1 1:2 1:3 1:4 1:5

As I previously mentioned, the reaction will be conducted in presence of oxygen and not hydrogen peroxide as I had previously assumed. The concentration of oxygen throughout these reactions will be [oxygen_{sea level}] and will be relatively unchanged. One significant difference when reacting Mb and H₂S in presence of oxygen will be the duration of the reaction. When I did my experiments last semester (in presence of hydrogen peroxide) the reaction lasted a matter of seconds. By using oxygen, the reaction will last 20 – 30 minutes.

The kinetic study I will be conducting will be via UV-Vis spectroscopy. I will be taking a spectrum of the reaction in progress every 3 minutes; for a total of 10 spectra. I will be spending extra hours this November in order to finish my experiments and provide a good amount of data so that I may have contributed effectively this semester to the Biominds program. If I can complete my established goals this semester then I think I would have made a significant contribution to science; since these experiments will aid other scientists when studying the patterns of reactivity of hydrogen sulfide with myoglobin.

~ by chrismolini on October 29, 2008.