These experiments ended up having some serious problems. We'd get to the final stages, in which we'd try to grow colonies of the transfected bacteria, and the'd fail to grow. After several reversals, we switched the restriction enyzme used to make the inserts. One of the ones we were using has trouble cutting at the ends of dna, so we replaced it with Hind III. That ended up working. We progressed to a stage wherein we'd sequence the dna, to analyze the mutation we created, but that sequencing failed and our laboratory time was up.
Not a failure though. Problems are not failures. Problem, literally, are oppurtunities. We got to see a lot of work go 'up in smoke', and that is a good experience in and of itself. We also got to see that a lot of things can really go wrong very easily and mysteriously, and infact this is to be expected. The oppurtunity is to find out what went wrong and how to correct it.
Of course, I doubt that an explanation like that would permit one to publish, or that it'd look too good on a grant application.
