During project 1 there were times when you had to repeat some of your procedures to get them to work or work better. Part of the logical process that you used to fix the execution of your experiment is the same process needed to optimize experimental procedures. Many of you may have thought to yourself, "If I had more time I could repeat this part of my experiment so that it would give very good results". Well, your wish is granted. During the last 5 weeks of the semester I want you to identify one of the procedures in your first experiment that needs to be optimized. For example, I saw a number of gels that either had to much or to little DNA. Or you may think that you could get a better transformation, or sequence, or restriction digest ... if you could alter some of the parameters.
You will need to review the procedures that you have used and identify one in which you would like to optimize the results.
Identify the variables that may need to be optimized.
Identify the ranges of those variables that will cover the optimum (You must have suboptimal values in both the lower and upper range of your variable in order to define a peak or optimum.) This may require some preliminary experiments to define this range.
Repeat your experiment at least twice, preferrably more, to show that your results are reproducable.
You will present your results as a poster during the final exam period.