July 29th

Dr. Stacy

This past week consisted of massive amounts of DNA extractions and PCRs!

I have been working with undergraduates, Sarah Shainker and Connon Thomas. 

Sarah Shainker continued optimizing her restriction enzyme digest (see Sarah's research page for more information about restriction enzymes!) and now has the method nailed down.  She started processing Gracilaria vermiculophylla samples from the native range in Japan, Korea and China and samples from our trip to the DelMarVa peninsula.  So far, results are quite interesting with very clear patterns differentiating native and non-native ranges!  Stay tuned for more about her research!

Connon Thomas continued his G. vermiculophylla growth experiments manipulating salinity for several South Carolina populations.  He also got his feet wet doing high-throughput (high throughput means 96 or more samples processed at once as opposed to 5 or 6 samples) microsatellite genotyping on all his algal individuals.

I spent this past week doing PCRs with Sarah and Connon plus continuing with the samples we collected this summer along the DelMarVa peninsula and in South Carolina.  Samples are now being run on the capillary sequencer (see the equipment page to learn more about the capillary sequencer).  This week also saw installment 7 of my monthly phenology sampling of the DNR mudflat here at Fort Johnson.  Though we found 1 male, all other individual G. vermiculophylla fragments were sporophytes or vegetative (meaning they were not yet reproductive).

Courtney

I have been hard at work helping our high school student Hannah work through traits on Gracilaria.  She is looking at how the amount of organic material, protein content, surface area to volume ratio, and palatability (how yummy it is) varies between males, females, and sporophytes.  Males and Females are haploid so they only have one set of genetic material (DNA, chromosomes, etc) while sporophytes are diploid meaning they have two sets of genetic material--one from mom and one from dad. 

Alyssa

I am continuing to do feeding assays with the urchins and crabs. I also spent some time this week collecting more amphipods (and one local type of isopod). I ran a choice assay with three different amphipod species and the isopod to see which animals would behave best for our experiment. While all of the animals behaved and consumed food from the feeding strips, we ultimately decided to continue on with Ampithoe valida since it is the most abundant species around Grice Marine Lab.

Courtney, Meredith, and I also collected some Diopatra from the mudflat and brought them into the lab in order to run an experiment with the Gracilaria chemistry we extracted last week. We are currently keeping an eye on the worms to make sure that they are happy and eating before running the experiment.