Mycologist have more Fungi!
Hey everyone. My name is William Colquhoun. I currently am a rising senior (class of 2010!!!) at Orange High School in Hillsborough. I enjoy playing sports namely soccer, football and wrestling. I also enjoy working in the science field. What is especially interesting to me is medical biology such as chemistry and pharmacology. A few years ago I was lucky to take part in a summer program called Launching into education about Pharmacology. I learned heaps of things about medical science and research from basic pipeting techniques to completing a full research project (in which pipeting was essential). This year I am fortunate to get the opportunity to explore in the environmental biology area. My mentor, Andrii Gryganskyi is a postdoc in the Vilgalys fungi lab at Duke.
.jpg)
MY Mentor! Dr Gryganskyi
My first day in the lab, I got to complete a Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) lab. In this lab we are trying to amplify DNA so that we can compare the length of the fragments – via gel electrophoresis - as well as choose samples which will be good to clone and clean so that we can eventually send them in for sequencing.
My PCR Bench
PCR is a process that basically takes the DNA that you put in (a small amount) and amplifies it via thermal cycling to and replicates it using and replicates it using other material (dNTP’s). After this you can use the PCR product to run a gel to tell you which fragments show promise for sequencing. We take those fragments and clean and clone them so then they are finally ready to be sequenced.
A lot of prep is necessary to do PCR labs. One thing is identifying strains of the fungus that you want to test. The strain that we are using is called Rhizopus Orzyae. Different species of this are found so we have to filter them out for the ones that fit our purpose. The species that we are looking for produce zygospores. This indicates that they do not follow the normal fungi asexual reproduction habits. Hence, they mate and produce offspring, called zygospores. We use a microscope to look for zygospores in different strains of Rhizopus Orzyae.
As I found out it is actually very hard to separate the zygosphores from sporangia as they are almost identical except for some details such as a tail and a fuzzy display.
This week I learned more about fungus and mycology that I expected I ever would. It was an awesome surprise and I’m excited to see what comes next!!
