Duke University | Howard Hughes Undergraduate Program

Once Howard Hughes ends, I'll be buckling down to work on college applications and fight the anxieties of that whole process. I get a semester and a half of suspense before decisions come back, so I'll try to enjoy senior year in between. Frankly, I'm kind of really excited about being a senior and about finally finishing up high school. I think I'm actually looking forward to going back to school for once this summer.

I wnt to major in environmental science, but after working in the Vilgalys lab I'm more inclined towards the research side of it than I used to be. I wanted to do politics and policy of the environment, but research would be cleaner and fundamentally simpler. Plus, I see the analytical challange in it of working out solutions that I always saw more easily in policy. Anyways, I'm certainly looking forward to college.

This summer was great, and I think I'll probably end up taking that mycology class in college, wherever I end up.

     Day-to-day in my lab is relatively routine.I arrive earlier than the other members of the team working on my project, and sort through the dozens of plates, in all different stages of growth, for contamination or any useful observations. I mark contaminated cultures and separate them from the rest, setting them aside to redo later that day. I check spore dilution plates-- coated with spores from original spore prints-- for enough growth to begin collecting single spore isolates and pick the SSIs from those that are ready. I check already existing SSIs for significant growth and record growth measurements for a different group each day.

     By the time my mentor and the research fellow arrive, we figure out what needs to get done and split it up. We've been working with a tricky PCR, trying to get it to run well for a week by now, and are still trouble-shooting on that in the mornings. After lunch, I often check on the mushrooms we're trying to fruit in the greenhouses. If we are successful and fruiting bodies are growing, I collect them, photograph them and store them for spore prints. The next day, I take them home and cook them! On and off, I count spores with a microscope or help with bits of other people’s projects. In the late afternoon, I usually run a gel connected to that day's PCR test and check the results before leaving.
 

So, remember that definition of a species you learned in your freshman bio class? That's the generally accepted biological species concept, that a species consists of individuals that demonstrate their genetic similarities by being able to successfully interbreed with each other and only each other. There are other twists on the species concepts, ranging from the early morphological idea (individuals grouped by physical characteristics), to the more modern phylogenetic concept (grouped by common evolutionary ancestors and connections).

While we know this biological species concept works for the animal kingdom, science doesn't yet have a constant rule that can be applied across the board to all species. Speciation is still a mystery, particularly because we don't have enough data. Drosophila provide the majority of the data because of their short generations, but species like asexual organisms can't match the concepts that work with fruit flies. Fungi are (to put it informally) sexually complex, with a many-staged life cycle. Data is sparse in the fungi kingdom with regards to speciation and that's where my research falls into place.

I work with the spores of a particular New Zealand population of Pleurotus pulmonarius, the edible oyster mushroom you can sometimes find in your grocery store. This particular population is rare in that it is able to interbreed with not only North American or European individuals of its species but also with members of P. eryngii, P. populinus, and P. ostreatus, completely seperate species of Pleurotus mushrooms. I'm characterizing the hybrids of this population and species, as well as beginning the steps towards a much longer project that will analyze the genetics and phylogenetics behind these species. In the long term, my lab is looking to add data to the pool of speciation research and head towards defining the "species gene" (or genes) that divide even very genetically similar species.

I realize that wasn't really a question, but it's a start.

My mentor, Elizabeth, was out of town last week at a conference, so you'll have to wait for an interview with her. Until then, I'm going to give you an update on how work on the Pleurotus project has been going, and the new science I've been learning. Although I've spent a lot of time growing cross cultures and collecting single spore isolates (SSIs) over the last few weeks, lately I've been doing more reading on genetics and lab work in that vein, while watching the fruit of those cultures (and my labors) grow.

The Pleurotus species cross I've been watching and caring for in the greenhouses finally "fruited"-- i.e. produced what you would consider "real" mushrooms. Yesterday, Elizabeth and I collected the mature specimens of a cross between Pleurotus Pulmonarius and a Lithuanian strain of Oyster Mushrooms. We carefully cut the fruiting bodies from the grain they had been growing on and loosely wrapped them in wax paper. After we leave them overnight in a dry drawer, the spores will fall from the fungi's gills onto the paper, making a dry spore print that we can then use as an source to culture new mushrooms or analyze the individual's DNA.

Today, we've also begun DNA extraction to start the journey towards sequencing some of our hybrids to help characterize them.

This is the lab space where I get to do most of my culturing. Originally, this was where I spent most of my time, although I've been working at the microscopes a lot lately.

The next picture is the main room of the lab, where people gather to use the computer [as I'm doing now...], or read, or talk over the particulars of a project. You can't see the hammock, but it's there. There's a library of mycology books, and all those cabinents are full of cultures for our Pleurotus project...