Week 3: Field Expedition

This week Lydie was absent, so I performed DNA extractions tediously on soil samples collected by Kiley Seitz for the majority of the time.  However, Wednesday our normal routine was upturned as we took a trip to the coast to various sites in order to collect new soil and water samples for analysis.  As much as I was excited to get out of the lab for a bit and get some field experience, waking up at 2:45 in the morning was not ideal.  However, at 3:30 Wednesday morning, Lydie, Kylie, Kylie's intern Isla, and I were off to the coast.  While the initial drive was a struggle, I felt surprisingly awake by the time we got to our first site.  At each site we took soil cores and surface and sub-surface soil samples for our lab, but we also had to collect water and soil samples for other labs as well.  At the first site we were a bit unorganized and sample collection took longer than expected; however, as we progressed we got into a nice routine and each of us collected our respective samples, distributed our samples into various tubes in preparation for DNA/RNA extraction, and loaded everything into the correct storage conditions in an organized manner.  By the time we reached the last few sites we were a very efficient team.  Needless to say, at the end of the day when we finally got back to campus we were all exhausted and went straight back to bed.  On Friday, Lydie returned, and gave me the hefty task of performing qPCR on a full plate (96 wells), which seemed a bit overwhelming at first, but by taking my time and paying careful attention to my pipetting technique and ensuring that everything was distributed in the correct well, I think I managed a decent run.  Hopefully the efficiency was within an acceptable range; next week I will analyze the results and if they are adequate more samples can be run.