Lynna Ye - Week 5: Ware Lab

Last week was my penultimate week at the Ware Lab. The first three days, I did more PCR troubleshooting and extractions as usual, and sent out the only 5 PCR products that worked to be sequenced.

On Thursday, grad student Will invited me to go out with him to the field with the high school students that he was in charge of (from the program I mentioned last week). While the other students followed the activities prepared for them as part of the program, I got the chance to catch some dragonflies/damselflies on my own as the other students set out bee traps, as well as help Will collect the turtle traps from the river - of which many were unfortunately empty. While it felt a bit odd to be isolated from other students who were supposedly my age, I felt happy that I got the opportunity to know the grad students as themselves in the lab, rather than just instructors and supervisors. Later in the afternoon, we all went out into a large field where wild cattails grew and where the rain from the thunderstorms earlier in the week had turned the earth into muddy ponds. It was exciting to see everyone running around and waving nets at the large, high-flying insects - high schoolers, PhD candidates, and professors alike, equal in our attempts to capture the elusive dragonflies.

Friday, I was back in the lab, and brought in some chocolate chip scones that I had baked the night before. There were more people in the lab than usual that day, as several undergrads appeared to do some work, and I was glad that everyone seemed to enjoy my snacks. That morning, Dr. Ware showed me how to make phylogenetic trees with the special programs that the lab generally uses, including ClustalX, Mesquite, and GARLI, and instructed me to retrieve sequences from GenBank of South African dragonflies, so I would have many species with which to make a tree. The goal of making the tree is to see which species my sequences are grouped with as "sister branches" so we can figure out what species my samples belong to. Dr. Peretz visited on Friday also, and after I explained my project to her and set up a new PCR with PCR beads instead of the usual Master Mix, we went out to a delicious lunch with Dr. Ware. Later that day, I was delighted to discover that the PCR beads contained some truly miraculous ingredients, allowing my PCR to work. I immediately sent those samples out for sequencing, but unfortunately the lab ran out of the beads, so I will have to go back to using the generally ineffective Master Mix.

Saturday I went the EXP dinner, and it was great seeing everyone who came and hearing about their summers in person.

My last week (next week) will likely be short, since it is technically an extension to make up for the 2 day week I had during Week 2, but I hope it will be productive!