A Week of Wasp DNA Extraction, Plus Matings

Well, I'd say it's really winding down, but my days are still full of excitement and work...

So, on Tuesday we did some more matings, but this time, our little test subjects decided to cooperate! Seriously, they didn't desiccate, drown, or fly away into the abyss, and so we were able to get some mating results that weren't flukes or frustratingly difficult to obtain. After two sessions of matings in the last two weeks, we've got data for about 40 wasp trios, and hopefully we'll analyze it before I leave, but I don't believe that I'll be writing about it. That reminds me, I've got to get on that before long. I've got all of the data, and ideas for graphs were suggested to me by my generous adviser, Dr. Hunter, who has a whole series of topic planned for me to cover. Unfortunately, since my research is on such an obscure subject, I'll probably have to spend half of the presentation explaining the background, but I guess that'll be a test of my grasp of the subject, as well.

Ah yes, I can't forget to mention the other big thing we did this week: DNA extraction, the HARD way. Up until Wednesday, all of my DNA extractions were chelex extractions, which involved grinding up my wasps in a drop of proteinase K on parafilm using a beveled tip on a pipettor, which was very easy. But alas, my days of easy DNA extraction ended abruptly on the morning of April 21, when I experienced my first extraction using a kit. Well, technically it wasn't my first, since that's the type we did in class with Johnston earlier this year, but it had been a while. Anyway, that was an arduous process involving 56-degree Celsius incubation, max-force centrifuging, and containers with holes in the bottom. Using that specially prepared DNA, which is more valuable than the one from chelex extractions (it lasts much longer in storage and doesn't have those annoying beads in it), we did some valuable PCRs and gel electrophoresis reactions. The story doesn't stop there, because even the gel electrophoresis was different this time around. Since we're planning on sending this DNA in for sequencing, we can't mix loading dye and SYBR green into it, so we have to place drops of dye/SYBR mix onto parafilm, and then mix that with some of the DNA, and then load it into super-tiny gel wells.

We did one PCR/gel yesterday with that method, and FOUR PCRs/gels today. Fortunately, I didn't have to do any culturing, since that was taken care of by the undergrads, but it was still a challenging day. Oh yeah, I got to see a practice talk by a grad student, and witnessed the feedback/critique of that talk by a university professor, so that's good experience for me when I practice my talk.