As you go left to right on the first row and then left to right on the second row, the plates represent increasing concentrations of manganese chloride. It is evident that the top left has the most "blue" wells and the least number of "yellow" wells. The yellow wells represent not much sugar being produced, or in other words, enzymes that were dysfunctional. The blue wells represent the opposite. The one on the top left has a lot of functional enzymes, but this is probably because the concentration of manganese chloride was the smallest, and so the mutation rate was also the lowest. Consequently, most of the enzymes are probably pretty close to the parent, and so it wouldn’t be worth our time to create a mutant library that are basically a bunch of the original enzyme. The one on the bottom right has the most yellow wells, because it had the highest mutation rate. In this case the mutation rate was so high that most of the enzymes are dysfunctional. So, the choice was really between the top right and bottom left concentrations. The former would probably be the more conservative one, with a lower mutation rate, but the latter one, we decided, would probably be a better idea in terms of creating a better enzyme, so that was the one we chose!
Whew! That was longer than I initially anticipated, so I’ll hold off on talking about social activities until the next post. It’s only been about a week and a half of SURF, and I already feel like I’ve done so much! But, never fear, there is more to come! Next week, I will be creating my mutant library of approximately 3000 mutants! I will tell you how it goes. Until then, hang in there, and leave me a comment if you have any questions! 🙂