Week Five: (July 19 - July 23, 2010) - The Art of Scientific Writing and Data Interpretation

Hello!  This week was more of a book and writing research week than lab work.  I am doing a lot of online and textbook research to really solidify the concepts of my lab work, as well as starting an outline and write-up for the ASE Symposium on August 20th.

7/19/10:  First thing in the morning I ran a gel for some more 18S and NITS PCRs with each sample’s PCR side by side for comparison.  The results were slightly peculiar - there was no signal for Myrionecta where we knew there was one.  After talking with Dr. Herfort and Dr. Zuber about the results we decided to equalize the ng/μL concentration (how much DNA/RNA there is) to 1 ng/μL.  Due to time constraints I couldn’t start the PCR today.  I have also been working on my write-up for the Symposium and had Dr. Herfort go through and edit it.

7/20/10:  I finished running all of the samples on the 18S PCR with 25 cycles, since we want to be consistent with the lab work.  Because of the upcoming cruise that leaves next Monday I wasn’t able to do anymore lab work so I helped Vikki and Sheedra clean bottles and worked more on my presentation writing.  It’s coming along nicely, and I think that I will start my powerpoint over the weekend.  Not much else happened today, but I will be going out on Thursday sampling with Sheedra and two other undergraduate interns.

7/21/10:  I ran the gel for yesterdays 18S PCR (25 cycles) and started the first part of the 18S and NITS PCR with a 1 ng/μL concentration.  I wasn’t able to do any other lab work today because Vikki is leaving for both legs of the cruise (about two weeks) and had some PCR work to finish up.  I talked with Dr. Herfort about my write-up so far and worked on it some more.

7/22/10:  Today was the sampling with Sheedra near Astoria.  Everything was the same as the first time I sampled with her except that we had to filter one set of the Ilwaco samples because of too many diatoms on the water.  Vanessa Green, the Director of Higher Education at CMOP, drove Sheedra, Vena, Ezra, and I (Vena and Ezra are both undergrad interns) out to the sampling sites.  We then had lunch at a Mexican restaurant and drove back to CMOP, arriving around 6:00 pm.

7/23/10: I ran the NITS PCR with the 1 ng/μL concentration of samples and ran the gel for the 18S and NITS PCRs.  The results came back with a fairly good signal for the 18S but no signals for NITS (except the positive).  Dr. Herfort and I theorize that there's not enough template DNA per μL, so I am going to redo the PCR with a 2 ng/μL concentration.  I was also filtering the water samples that we collected yesterday with Sheedra and Vikki.

~ Deirdre