when nothing worked

I came into Mod 2 really excited because CRISPR was super ~*cutting edge*~. I remember hearing Eric Lander talk about it in 7.012 so I was excited to actually use it. I was definitely kinda lost in the beginning but it eventually clicked, which was good. I really appreciated how we got to start from start to end--from figuring out what gene to target to actually having CRISPRi work in the E. coli cells. It felt that much more "real" in the sense that we had control over some part of the experiments. Although the whole "in silico" part and all the plasmid stuff on Benchling were super difficult and annoying to work with...

I remember Noreen telling us at the beginning of the year that when we first learn about the experimental process as young students, we think of it as a straight line, when in real life it's a huge scribble. I definitely understood that a bit better after our results showed that CRISPRi had no effect (and even worse, some conditions resulted in NEGATIVE lactate production. Like what the heck how is our data so wrong).

At least failure doesn't delay/prevent us from graduating like I presume it does in grad school... In 20.109 we can just move on with our lives and write a research article with unsuccessful results :D Also, shout out to the blue team for having working data that I could talk about in my research article

All in all, despite the Benchling struggles and my data pretty much being trash, I still enjoyed this Mod since we got to go from start to finish, which seems pretty rare in an undergraduate lab course. Plus, when I mention what I did this module to my non course-20 friends, they all recognize CRISPR from 7.012 and think it's really cool that we're doing cutting edge stuff! Thank you to all the staff who helped us through this module! Whether that was being understanding that we were all screwed for 20.320, bringing us snacks, or spending so much time explaining concepts thoroughly in lecture/lab :) Can't believe that we only have a month left to go in the semester, time really flies!