Blogs

The start of the CMOP spring cruise is in its final countdown.  Loading will begin on Sunday 10 April and a departure is scheduled for 1000 on Monday.

The objectives of the cruise are:
* Deploy mooring at NH-10
* Recover and deploy moorings at OGI-01 and SATURN-02 near the Columbia River
* Deploy acoustic bottom moorings near Columbia River mouth
* CTD stations along some historical locations -- such as NH, CR lines--some with water and vertical bongo net tows

See red water blooms for yourself. Watch scientists Lydie Herfort and Victoria Campbell study red water blooms in the Columbia River estuary.

Look at all those microscopic red cells. OK. I know what you are thinking. The image is black and white. But let me tell you, those cells aren't and when they are in full bloom they turn the Columbia river estuary red. They are called Myrionecta rubra and - ready for some science jargon - are a neritic, planktonic ciliate. Late in the summer they create impressive non-toxic, red blooms. CMOP is trying to learn if they could be used as an early warning signal for changes in the environment.

Click here to learn more about the research.

As for the last week in lab I amplified and isolated the 332 base pair region in 28S Katablepharis in the Columbia River estuary differs from 28S Katablepharis japonica. This process is just to insure that this frame is real and it is not a misread on the sequence. I'm a little bummed that I didnt get to do real time PCR but thats the nature of experiments sometimes. I will be interested to see the future outcomes of the project.

Longest introduction to the Picture of the Week:

This was the final week of my internship (so sad!).  I wrapped up some various lab work, still not figuring out the problem with my PCRs.  I also was working on my poster and presentation, getting them ready for the Symposium that was on Friday.

 Coming to CMOP on Monday was different than usual. The building was quiet and the intern office is empty - except for me. It is a bit lonely without the other interns who I have gotten to know and like the past couple months. I do have much more room to spread my stuff out in the office though:

As I sit at my desk for the last 25 minutes of my time here at CMOP, I look back on what has been an amazing summer. (Well, really I'm looking out the window, but in my mind I'm looking back.) The sticky notes that covered every surface of my desk are gone, along with my little orchid.

8/9/10:  My NTS PCR that I did on Friday had been in the fridge for the whole weekend, so I ran it on a gel right away.  I got very peculiar results back - all of my samples were “streaking”, or creating long bands that span the length of the gel.  To be sure it wasn’t the electrophoresis set-up, I cleaned it thoroughly and re-ran the gel, only to get the same reults.  I went even further by throwing out our loading dye (a chemical used to make the PCR samples sink into the wells) and our 1X TAE (used for making the gel and acting as a conductor). 

 The last few days of this internship, I pondered and proffered my paper and presentation of my products. I proceed to progress from Portland to Pullman where I'll purposefully peruse over passages of text to prepare for proving my
potential to a plethura of professors.

      Pictured is the product of my python pilgrimage.

With week eight of my time at CMOP done, I have finally come to a firm conclusion. Platinum is the most effective surface modification. Over an average of three trials, platinum, while using hexachloroplatinic acid as the photodeposition reagent, produced 92 percent better degradation rate. Although I am not certain on why the acidic deposition reagent works better than the salt reagent, I hypothesize it is due to a change in pH, and plan to investigate it next week.