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Hello flog!
Today we continued lab work… so I will tell you about the names that we have given all of the lab equipment.
Once upon a time when we in August of 2018 when the new Ison lab was being set up/boxes being emptied it was decided that all of the lab equipment should be named after women in STEM. Thus began the quest to find the perfect name for each equipment. The we started with Rosalind Franklin the new thermocycler. This is a perfect name for a thermocycler because Franklin is famous for her X-ray crystallography work that determined the structure of DNA. Franklin died of ovarian cancer before the Nobel Prize was awarded for determining the structure of DNA making her unable to receive the award that she deserved. Our other thermocycler we have named Martha Chase (Wooster class of 1950) worked with Alfred Hershey to determine that DNA is the heredity unit not proteins. Hershey received the Nobel Prize in 1969 however Chase did not.
 Rosalind Franklin  Martha Chase Our ever loyal centrifuge is named in honor of Chien-Shiung Wu a Chinese American physicist who was a part of the Manhattan project, and made discoveries relating to beta decay. Wu’s colleges who came up with the theory for conservation of parity won the Nobel prize when it was Wu who actually tested this theory (hmmm beginning to see a theme here).
 Chien-Shiung Wu Our hot water bath is named for Barbara McClintock a botanist (#plantsarecooltoo)! She is known for her work mapping out the genome of corn and discovered transposons/jumping genes which are genes that can move around the genome.
 Barbara McClintock Nettie Stevens a geneticist who discovered sex chromosomes and the role they play in sex determination. Stevens had a short career but an impactful one, in the nine years after receiving her PhD she published 38 papers, she then died of breast cancer in 1912. She also was one of the first to use fruit flies as a model organism. We have named our gel rig after her.
 Nettie Stevens In-Young Ahn is the first Asian woman to be an Antarctica station leader she also was the first South Korean woman to visit Antarctica. She is a benthic ecologist studying clams and other bivalves. Due to her work in the Antarctica we have named our freezer after Ahn.
 In-Young Ahn Diana Patterson is the first woman to run the Australian Antarctica station. She has written a book about her time in the Antarctica titled The Ice Beneath my Feet: My Year in Antarctica. We have named our fridge after Patterson.
 Diana Patterson Our homogenizer (shaker) is named for the British entomologist Miriam Rothschild, the company that makes the machine is “BeadBug” hence the entomologist. Rothschild was the leading expert on fleas, she was the first to understand the flea jumping mechanism that allows them to jump very far. She also did work showing how the fleas are able to alter the hormones of their host to aid in their own reproduction!
 Miriam Rothschild Ada Lovelace who we have named our lab computer in honor of, was an impressive mathematician. She wrote the first computer program and algorithm in 1850 this is known simply as “Note G”. She also argued against the existence of AI “The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform. It can follow analysis; but it has no power of anticipating any analytical relations or truths.”
 Ada Lovelace We are not quite done there are still some process of equipment that need names but we have named the majority. There are many women in STEM that have gone unrecognized for the work they have done for their field. I understand that naming a piece of equipment is a small recognition but every little bit counts and over time a difference can be made.
See ya’ in a while flog!
Mia
P.S. This Saturday I am heading out to Arizona to do field work with hummingbirds and a desert shrub Coral bean. This work will be for my senior thesis (AHH that’s scary to say/type) where I will be determining how temporal and geographic distances between plants affect matting rates. So I won’t be posting for two weeks, but after that I’ll be back! I promise to come back with stories of cactus, rattle snakes, scorpions and NO ER trips!
Hi everyone!
It’s been a fun and productive week at the College of Wooster and we’re already starting to see the products of our hard work!
Avery, Mia, and Miyauna spent the day continuing DNA extractions, this time using fresh samples in an attempt to determine if there is a difference between extracting DNA from fresh or dried leaves.
Jennifer, Avery, and I continued planting seeds and hoping they’ll grow big and tall!
At the end of the day, we had a pleasant surprise when we successfully extracted DNA from the fresh leaf samples with much more ease than the dried samples!
Not only did we find some amazing results with the DNA extraction, but our seeds are starting to sprout their first leaves! You go little guys!
After such an amazing week, I can’t wait to see what the next one holds!
Until next week,
Ren
Echinacea Project 2019
PhD Student, Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, University of Minnesota
Research Interests
I’m interested conservation biology, especially as it relates to pollination, phenology, movement ecology, and population genetics. For my dissertation, I’m studying pollinator-mediated gene flow and trying to figure out under what conditions pollinators maintain connectivity between plant populations in fragmented environments. I think a lot about how the processes that drive how species respond to habitat fragmentation vary among spatial and temporal scales.
Statement
I grew up in a suburb of the Twin Cities and currently live in the silver city of St. Paul. I started working with the Echinacea Project as an intern in 2015. In my free time, I like to spend time outside, read, garden, and go on walks with my dog Gooseberry!
Here’s me on a snowy day!
Hello flog!
If you’ve been reading carefully, you’ll remember that we planted some seedlings here (at Echinacea Team “West” I guess) about a month and a half ago. Now, those seedlings are growing some big ol’ true leaves, and are almost ready to go in the ground!
Happy, watered seedlings! We have ~1400 seedlings to plant in Minnesota, and more will be coming for College of Wooster. I’m currently working on putting together the master plan for putting these all in the ground. Watch out for a flog about that, because its going to be one busy, dirty day digging in the prairie
Hello flog friends!
We are busy here in our Ohio lab working hard, getting stuff done, and having a great time doing it!
Bright and early in our morning, I accompanied Seed Master Ren to visit our little seeds after they’re first summer night in the growth chamber.
Avery, the President of PCR, and Mia, clumsy R ninja, continued running PCRs and getting all of that DNA information.
I even got to head down with Mia to the nanodrop (which was the coolest thing ever). The nanodrop definitely gave us some very interesting results.
We then all came together with Jennifer/Dr.Ison for a very fun and informative lunch gathering.
Ren would then go to check on the seeds and plant the ones that were ready to go! Now that some are planted, we are preparing to baby them as much as possible to get them through the rough first couple of weeks.
After all of this hard work, we even had some time for a lab coat selfie!
We shall see what amazing adventures the next day holds!
Have a great day flog!
Miyauna
Hello Everyone: I just finished my 30th year of teaching/coaching and am looking forward to being outside during the summer months. I am currently getting ready to lead 14 students to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wildermess(BWCAW) for one week before i begin with the Echin Project. In my spare time i enjoy taking my two dogs (Lilly and Clyde) out for walks/runs, and spending time with my 4 children, ages 17- 22. I am interested in learning more about our local ecosystems in West central MN and learning about prairie plants.
Hello flog!
It’s been another busy day for Team Echinacea at the College of Wooster.
Seed Master Ren started the day off by making an excursion to the garden store to hunt down some soil that will be used to plant the seeds once they have germinated and formed a radical. Then, she showed off her muscles, mixing the soil with sand and some water. Additionally, the plant growth chamber for our first group of seeds was switched over into summer mode, so we will hopefully we will see some baby plants soon!
Seedmaster Ren wrangles some dirt Extraction extraordinaire Miyauna cranked out another grueling set of DNA extractions from some of the parental plants. Luckily though, this should be our last set of extractions at least for several weeks while we wait for our seeds to germinate and grow big enough so we can take a leaf sample.
Miyauna, getting into the extraction zone. Our resident R expert/clumsy ninja Mia and I teamed up to begin PCR reactions with the DNA extracted on Tuesday and a batch that was extracted back in November. Each DNA sample needs to undergo 10 different PCR reactions (for the 10 different microsatellite markers being used), and after a bit of a slow start familiarizing ourselves with the methods, we ended up breezing through three PCR reactions. We also ran some gels and a nanodrop on the DNA samples to double check and make sure that DNA was successfully extracted for all of the samples.
We love PCR and gel electrophoresis!!! After all this hard work, Team Echinacea Ohio called it a day in the lab. However, our team members still had one more important task – the noble quest for ice cream. Braving a torrential downpour, we set off for a local ice cream parlor/shop, where we enjoyed the sweet rewards of a hard day’s work.
Lab mates that eat ice cream together stay together So long for now!
Avery
Echinacea Project 2019
Biology, The College of Wooster 2021
Research Interests:
I am super fascinated with how life on this beautiful planet interacts and how truly interconnected everything is. I am particularly interested in how these interactions, and the lose of certain interactions, affect the reproductive and developmental biology of organisms. What affects fertility, stem cells, organogenesis, the effects of fragmentation, ART, and more! Genetics and the process of life happening is so awesome, that I hope to study it in graduate school !
Statement:
I was born and raised in Akron, Ohio. Along with being a biology major, I am also a Chinese minor and Education Licensure candidate at the College of Wooster. I love baking, hunting for great antique shops, trying fun food, and watching movies! I also enjoy hanging with my family, including my dogs, and exploring our urban parks. You can always find me singing, telling a story, or saying how cool science is.
Echinacea Project 2019
Majors in Biology & Environmental Science
The College of William & Mary, Class of 2019
Research Interests
Broadly I am interested in community ecology and population genetics for conservation. At my undergraduate institution I studied Asclepias syriaca, or common milkweed, another grassland plant. Through this work I learned about the genetic and phenotypic variation of plants within fine-scale habitats as well as the transmission of herbivory defense signals. This inspired my most recent interests in pollination ecology and nectar defense. I’m excited to investigate similar avenues within a new ecosystem and study species, as well as learn more about statistical analysis by working with the Echinacea Project’s long-term dataset!
Statement
I’m from Raleigh, NC and attended college in Williamsburg, VA, and am only a little terrified of the weather I’ll encounter in Minnesota and Chicago! As a birder I’ve spent my fair share of time chasing feathered things in blistering heat and freezing cold, and I’m eager to start learning new Midwestern birds. In addition to peering through binoculars and thumbing through field guides I love to draw, listen to podcasts and share trivia I learn while in the depths of a Wikipedia rabbit hole. I particularly enjoy observing the natural world while hiking and canoeing.
Asclepias is dead, long live Echinacea!
Hello flog long time no see!
Team Echinacea East working out of America’s premier college for mentored undergraduate research (lol) had a busy day! This summer we will be performing paternity tests on the seeds made during the big events from last summer. Today we did a set of DNA extractions on leaf tissue that was grown in the spring. This is a very long process and was a fairly novel process for all involved but everyone did a great job! Especially our Extraction Extraordinaire: Miyauna who led us fearlessly through the treacherous and tedious process.
The Extraction Extraordinaire hard at work. While the samples were in the water bath Dr. Ison/Jennifer gave a very interesting presentation giving background on previous work done by members of team echinacea. For lunch we stole some extra boxed lunches from a high school camp going on in the building (they were very good). These stolen lunches gave us the fuel necessary to finish the days work.
Miyauna and Ren working on seed germination Seed Master Ren finished putting all of the seeds in cold stratification. We have the seeds in the cold so they think its winter, then we take them out of the cold.
 The seeds chillin’ mid “winter” When all this was going on I (R clumsy ninja) was working in R analyzing genotyping data from a different project.
Tomorrow we will start running PCRs on the DNA samples we extracted today, under guidance of Avery the President of PCR.
Until next time,
Mia
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