Come and visit us often for updates on our students and their research progress.
What do we do exactly?
Students will use recently published DNA bar codes for freshwater zooplankton to determine the species of freshwater zooplankton present in a water samples from a new research project conducted by OSU faculty.
This is the amazing introductory video that Dr. Andy Dzialowski made of his presentation for the new students this semester!
Today, our research culminated into a 2-dimensional memory of progress and growth. We presented our semester of work to our lab’s instructors and other faculty members on campus. 
Can’t wait to present at the symposium tomorrow!!
DNA barcoding is a precise process. Luckily, our mentors and peers are here to help each other all along the way.
During our lab ours today, we continued to improve our PCR skills. Polymerase Chain Reaction, or PCR for short, is the process of replicating DNA exponentially by cycling the DNA product through different temperatures. This replication allows for the ability to run multiple tests using the same strand of DNA without having to extract it from multiple organisms of the same species multiple times. Furthermore, it allows us to generate a usable amount of product to run these reactions.
After PCR, we then analyzed our PCR product in a gel electrophoresis reaction. As I have stated in other blog posts, gel electrophoresis is a useful procedure that allows us to analyze PCR product to determine if we successfully replicated the DNA, among other things. A further explanation can be found on my post all about gel electrophoresis.
Next week, we should be continuing the analysis of the PCR product in another DNA extraction lab. Eventually, once everyone is sufficiently ready, we will be analyzing the zooplankton samples that Dr. Jewoski gave us at the beginning of the semester. This has the small, but real possibility of us uncovering a new species of zooplankton, which is exciting for everyone in the lab.
Today I have been working on a DNA extraction procedure with our zooplankton practice and actual samples that we obtained during the first few weeks of the course. Dr. Ren completed the first step of the procedure by incubating the samples at 56 degrees centigrade in a buffer and proteinase mixture. I continued the procedure by following a modified procedure that was given to the lab class by Dr. Ren. In short, we added different amounts of different buffers and centrifuged the solutions. We then moved the solution to a spin column to isolate the DNA. After isolating the DNA in the sponge-like surface of the spin column, we then added a buffer that would dissolve the DNA into the buffer, allowing us to obtain the samples after one final centrifuge.
I will continue this procedure in the afternoon by measuring the concentration of the practice and actual DNA samples we extracted earlier today. This will involve using the NanoDrop machine to obtain the DNA concentration. The extracted DNA will be combined with some amount of water, a master mix, and the same amounts of forward and reverse primers. This will then be cycled in a PCR machine and will be run through a gel electrophoresis reaction next week. I believe that this will be used to determine if the DNA that was extracted belongs to an existing zooplankton species, or if it belongs to an undiscovered species of zooplankton. The primary goal of the research is to test a new DNA sequencing technique.
Today we extracted DNA from our practice sample and our sample of zooplankton in order to measure the concentration. We measured the concentration of each sample and will begin to run more tests in the next lab.
Today in lab we started to extract DNA and tested the concentration from our final sample.
Slowly but surely our practice samples are undergoing Electrophoresis making bands to show their movement. Gotta be patient. Patience is hard
As of around 3:10 today, we’ve all introduced our zooplankton PCR products into gel electrophoresis. The wait is long, but the results should, hopefully, be worth it!
OKState DNA Barcoding 