The main goal I made for myself today was to make the activities I am scripting much more intuitive (especially for first-time second-lifers) then they already are since I believe they seem simple to me only because I was the one who made them. To do this, I have started to create instructions for restriction digest that are not contained within a notecard, which some may be inclined to pass over. So now when the instruction label is clicked (just below the writing – Restriction Digest Start) it will now explain what each section of the activity is for and what you can do (It also lights up each section being talked about to draw the eye), but I would like to improve upon this by adding more detail. They will also get a notecard that explains the restriction digest, ligation and phosphatise treatment aspects of the entire molecular cloning activity.
I also completed the script for a general activity for bacterial transformation so now it will quiz you each time you put a certain object into the tube’s inventory and the questions will relate to the item you added. It then keeps track of the number of questions you answer correctly and if you answered all of the questions right, your competent cells were successful in up taking the DNA. I believe I will make this activity a gradient for now so as long as eight or more questions were answered correctly, the competent cells will survive on their respective plates, just at different levels of growth. I am unsure if I should keep track of each avatars score, though I believe it is possible since I have seen this used other places for different reasons, but it would prevent someone taking credit for someone else’s work. Questions include: What temperature do competent cells need to be stored at?, What does it mean for cells to be competent? etc.
Now I am back to looking at the activities that I began two months ago and am now updating them to suit the lab activities. I have started and will continue tomorrow:
- Cleaning up scripts – getting rid of unnecessary code, making machines work for specific activities
- Renaming items so everything can function together
- Creating instructions for activities such as restriction digest
- Changing the script for gel electrophoresis to give specific gels back depending on the materials used
- Adding more conditions to the sequencing machine so that the various products obtained throughout the lab can be analyzed there
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