Marlee Mitchell - California Academy of Sciences
Week 3

Molecular Lab… Full?

With the new reliance on molecular and DNA work and with a decline of morphological enfaces, the machines used in sequencing at the laboratory at The California Academy of Sciences are running overtime. This situation can create a bit of trouble for a group of molecular biology undergrads that are being pushed out of the lab this week so that the scientists can meet deadlines and publications. So while these high-tech machines (Polymerase Chain Reaction or PCR machine, ABI sequencer, the machine that codes the DNA after PCR giving you A,T,G and C’s) run at on overtime, the rest of us must find other work.

     Not being part of the SSI internship group has helped me in my third week as a Pinhead Intern at the California Academy of Sciences because I am working directly for the Curator of the Entomology department, Dr. Charles Griswold. So I was free to use the molecular lab and be confused with the cleaning process of PCR. This part of PCR is still a bit over my head but it will make sense in time. When the cleaning was completed, we were left with sequences! Some of the sequences were good and some bad, none-the-less they were sequences!

     After looking at the sequences and some editing we moved to other things. I spent an entire day entering locations (longitude and latitude), the collectors of each specimen, and the locality of the collection onto an Excel program. That day was a bit mind-boggling and I felt like my eyes were going to fall out of my head. The next day I entered all of that information onto Google Earth and now we have results. We can see some relationships with cave systems and their minute rare spider inhabitants.

     By the end of the week, I began using Auto Montage, a system of photographing specimens. First a specimen is selected and you take dorsal (back), ventral (front) and lateral (side) shots of the body, as well as the sexual organs and spinnerets. This is all done with a specialized microscope, specific software and a careful eye. First, you take a series of shots focusing at different levels on the organism. These photos are then uploaded onto a program that assembles them using only the parts of the photos with the focused sections. One can focus from top to bottom or vice versa, it is a matter of preference. It was difficult at first and I’m still developing my technique, but the photos are amazing, and will be posted on the web in time.