Oliver Wood

yeah, i was hoping that wasn't going to be the advice. was hoping that this was a common problem with the titration. I suppose what i could do is monitor the curves and when they peak or level off take that reading. Pitty though, means i can't do my other assays in the wait time But thanks for your imput, i'll certainly investigate the opions it offers. I'm going to go to the insectary now and harvest some baselines to grind for tomorrow's attempt. (bugger this is going to be a terrible week!!!) Cheers

I'm having a spot of bother with a monooxygenase assay for a certain mosquito larvae. When i add the hydrogen peroxide the colour change is almost immediate, but it starts to fade after a while, and the colour is pretty much gone by the time i'm meant to read the plate. This is what i've been doing: 20ul of homogenate in duplicate 80ul of 0.1g 3,3',5,5' Tetramethyl Benzidine (crusher) dissolved with 5ml methanol, plus 15ml of 0.25M sodium acetae buffer pH 5.0 to each well. 25ul of 3% hygrogen peroxide to each well Read at 1 and 2hrs at 650nm endpoint. I've repeatedly checked my buffer pH's and made sure the mixtures in each well are all stirred up. Any suggestions are greatly welcome...i can't really afford to have to toss more data...running out of specimens. Thanks Cheers Ol

Look on the bright side. At least you don't have a quota set against you on the colour of your skin. Here in South Africa its very hard to get in if you are a pale male, but that's not the point. The point is that you have no other hurdles to overcome other than lifting your grades and doing the right volunteer work. I didn't do amazingly well in high school (C average), so of course i thought i couldn't get in. So i went and started studying psychology instead (BORING!). Have to say at this point that my marks sored once i got out of school and was working for myself. (That's the key, work for yourself, even while in school, not because you have to work to keep others happy). After a bit i switched to a Bachelor of Science. Graduated and applied but still didn't get in. Did my honours, applied and got rejected again. Now i'm doing a Masters in Medical Entomolgy, probably going to bump it up to a PhD. After that i'll apply again. (Won't they look stupid to reject a Doctor, hey). Basically you may not get to where you want to get immediately but there are different routes, and you will mature as you go along, making you better suited for your dream. Don't give up the faith