WEEK 2:
This past weekend was quick and also a lot of fun. All of us REU interns went on a camping trip together, we had a wonderful time enjoying the unusually warm beach day, and a nice 4 mile hike, which ended with us catching a small glimpse of a gray whale hanging around a bed of kelp in the ocean. At the start of this week my mentor, Dr. Richard Emlet, took me and my lab partner Annika out on a boat to go search for some sand dollars at low tide early in the morning. We found many sand dollars, but they were small and I am unsure if any of them will be able to release eggs to fertilize. The next morning we went out in search of purple sea urchin’s that we could possibly spawn. We went out to Sunset Bay and found an abundance of sea urchins of all different sizes. We checked the gonads (reproductive organs) of the urchins to see if they are capable of producing eggs. In the process I was able to try fresh sea urchin, despite my prior hesitation when seeing it at sushi restaurants. It wasn’t my favorite but next time I go to a sushi restaurant I don’t think I would hesitate to order it. I set up the sand dollars and sea urchins I collected into tanks with running sea water, they will be kept there until I am ready to spawn them. The project I mentioned I was working on last week has now evolved into something different. Instead of looking at swimming speeds of those larvae in low oxygen water, I will be trying to discover more information about pigment cells that first appear in larvae at early stages (More specifically, the gastrula stage). The roles of these cells is not fully known but it is thought that they have something to do with protection against UV light and may be a part of the immune system in echinoderms. My new project is trying to see if I can create more of these pigment cells by exposing them to UV light. I hypothesize that the UV light will cause larvae to create more of these pigment cells to protect themselves from UV damage. I predict that those grown in absence of UV light will have fewer pigment cells. To test if pigment cells play a role in immune system of echinoderms I will introduce the larvae to a strain of bacteria and see which group (those exposed to UV light and those not exposed) is able to better survive growing alongside bacteria. The project has been a work in progress and there are some aspects that still need to be worked out, for example how long I can expose these larvae to UV without causing serious damage. I have some ideas but I will not know if these times work until I test them out.
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AuthorMy name is Victoria I am from Palmdale, CA but over my life I have moved around a lot and lived different places. I love to travel and explore, especially along the coast. I am a Zoology major studying at Cal Poly Humboldt and like to spend time reading about animal behavior. Archives
August 2022
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