I have spent a lot of time in the lab this week working on the molecular side of my project. Even though I am in the lab from morning until dinner extracting DNA, amplifying it, and purifying it, the time goes by extremely quickly. I suppose this is what happens when you enjoy what you are doing, and I am extremely happy doing this work. And although I am done with working with the DNA directly for a while, I will come back to it once we collect more samples from the field.
While changing the water in the bowls we keep the nemerteans in, one of my lab mates found some egg masses laid on the glass. This was quite the surprise, since most nemertean species release their gametes (eggs and sperm) into the water and fertilization occurs rather randomly (not all in one place like we saw in the egg masses). There are about four clumps of eggs in the bowl, which means we will hopefully get to watch worms hatch out of them! We may also gain insight into what the eggs look like as they mature, so this will be both fun and informative for us. Working with live animals can sometimes be frustrating (such as them escaping) but there are also moments like this when something completely unexpected happens and that is something I am starting to appreciate about biology. I am looking forward to learning more skills next week, as we just sent our first round of DNA samples for sequencing. Once we get the sequences back, I will practice cleaning them up (DNA from each specimen is sequenced twice so we have to fix any discrepancies between the two sequences we get) and run them through a database to compare with previously published sequences. Getting the sequences back and analyzing them is super exciting for me because I will finally get to see the fruits of my labor working with the DNA. Until now, I have only seen liquids of various colors containing DNA (the DNA itself is too small to see with the naked eye) and indicators that DNA is present in the solution. Soon, I will have a more tangible product that I can read and use to make meaningful comparisons between individual worms. I will also have trustworthy identifications of the ribbon worms we sequenced, ensuring that the identification guide I make will be accurate. We plan to collect nemerteans in a new type of habitat, mudflats, in the coming days. We hope to find species different from the ones we found in the tide pools of the rocky intertidal zone in past weeks. Once we have collected our new worms, we will start the entire process over again: photographing, making vouchers, and DNA analysis. Updates are to follow.
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AuthorI am Jacob and am from Rancho Cucamonga, CA. I am a rising Junior at Pomona College in Claremont, CA who has never studied marine biology in school before but has always been interested in it. I am incredibly excited to spend the next two months working in Svetlana Maslakova’s lab studying Nemertean (ribbon worm) biodiversity through genetic analysis. Archives
August 2021
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