Too much light?

Last week the Science Spotlight crew stopped by the lab and heard that many Gracilaria specimens being cultured in the wetlab had died off.
One idea is that they received too much light. Huh? It's true, folks. Too much light, especially in an artificial environment can be bad for algae or plants.

Remember the scientific method? Well... that part about analysis can be a big portion of what a scientist does after running an assay, or experiment. Yesterday we caught up with Stacey in her and Glauco's office.  Boy! She sure was hard at work at her computer!  When asked what she was up to, with a wry smile she answered, "Data analysis.  It can be exciting, sometimes not so exciting." Glauco, also at his desk, answered he was indeed busy with his experiments this week.

The Science Spotlight team stopped by the Sotka lab today and found Sarah and Paige who had just finished cleaning up in the wetlab.  It turns out, sometimes things in science don't always go as planned- and a lot of times there isn't a plan, because you just don't know. In this case, raising and growing Gracilaria in a lab meant that at some point, some of these specimens might "kick the bucket", quite literally.  Much of the Gracilaria residing in the wetlab had died off and as of yesterday, the Sotka lab was down from 48 buckets housing algae to 22.  This is neither a positive or a negative necessarily, just the natural flow of events in a lab over time as experiments and research goes on.  Despite the death of some specimens, Sarah is wrapping up one last experiment with the Gracilaria collected in Japan.

Follow up with our blog this week as we discuss a potential theory for the wetlab Gracilaria mortality!