Blogs

Things have definitely started picking up this week here in Astoria. Everyone started breathing again after the site visit on Monday and the real work of the summer seems to have begun. There are several things I’m working on currently, besides my daily duties of helping out with station upkeep. In addition to gathering metadata on the stations I have been told to start learning about CMOP’s database and how to update it. This means learning about network interactions and the computer language PHP.

This week i have been working on a lacZ Assay, which is a three day experiment.  The first part is 5hours and the other parts are about three hours.   The first time i began this assay i made a mistake at the 4th hour of the first part and had to repeat the experiment.   In this experiment i  am working with two strains the LAB2854 and ORB6188.  The purpose of this assay is to determine B-galactosidase activity in the bacteria during anaerobic bacteria, however  the experiment is still in progress.

Last year after completing the ASE program I was fortunate enough to be offered a part time job during the school year in the lab with Tawyna and Joe. I usually came in from 3-5 hours a week prepping for cruises and working on data organization/analysis involving the CDOM samples that I had worked with the previous summer. Then I was offered the opportunity to come back again this summer as a full time student through ASE.

Conjugation procedure:
Prep - Add 5ml of LB broth to a test tube followed by KG4. Repeat with KG15 and KG18 (separate tubes so as to avoid recombinants) as well as 6µl kanamycin in both the KG15 and KG18.
KG4 = WT
KG15 = Helper
KG18 =Transposon

Step 1: In order to get bacteria to the exponential phase, 5ml of LB broth is added to a test tube followed by 100µl of suspended bacteria. This is done for all three.
Step 2: Allow bacteria to grow for 3 hours.
Step 3: Add to a 1.5ml tube according to the chart

I realized this week that the B.neritina ovicells I was looking at did not contain very well developed embroys. E.sertula is more likely to be found inside ovicells that contain developed or developing embyros -- empty ovicells probably won't contain any bacteria at all! I spent the majority of the week correcting my mistake by doing FISH on ovicells that clearly contained a well developed embryo. I discarded all empty looking ovicells!

The graph shows the latest chlorophyll data from Phoebe.

Unfortunately I had to finish 3 final exams this week down at OSU so I was only able to attend the orientation on Monday and a few hours in the office today (Friday).  Today I had the opportunity to meet with my mentor Dr. Mariya Smit and read over a literature review of the research topic we will be dealing with this summer- Using biosensor technologies to monitor and map out microbial communities in the Columbia River plume on a year-to-year and seasonal basis. 

What a week! So on Monday I met all my new colleagues: the mentors and the other interns. I was really excited to meet my mentors: Tawnya and Michelle, along with all the others in my lab.