Sample information

A worm-like insect, with a long segmented body, and six legs was found outside on the sidewalk of the park. An hour after capturing it’s body began changing into a burnt brown/black color.

Methods

DNA extraction: The caterpillar was dissected accordingly and its insides were crushed thoroughly enough to extract some of its DNA into the tube.

Gel electrophoresis lanes:

1. DNA Ladder
2. Woodlouse Spider
3. Caterpillar (my arthropod)
4. Positive Arthropod Control
5. Negative Arthropod Control
6. DNA Positive Control
7. Water

Note: The Arthropod gel has each sample in the lanes as listed above. However, in the Wolbachia gel the positive and negative control swapped lanes, so the negative arthropod control is in lane four, while the positive arthropod control is in lane five.

Analysis: The entire procedure worked well for the Arthropod gel and bands were appearing in all the right lanes. In contrast, the Wolbachia gel lacked bands specifically from the lane containing the positive arthropod control. There could’ve been an issue with the primer or pipetting. It’s also possible that something went wrong when preparing the PCR reaction.

Results

I’m not very confident with the results, because the Wolbachia gel lacked bands while the Arthropod gel went accordingly and well. The missing bands on the Wolbachia gel might suggest that a step in the process went wrong, which makes our results inconclusive and unknown since it may have also happened to another one of our bands (the collected arthropods).