Dr. Bybee was offering a study abroad/internship in Brazil for two students to study a specific genus of damselflies, Hetaerina. (An easy way to tell dragonflies and damselflies apart is their size, damselflies are skinnier). That sounded like a great opportunity to learn how much I enjoy working with insects, and explore a part of the world I never had before. So here I am!
This is a ruby spotted damselfly in the genus hetaerina, so you can see how beautiful they are. Eventually Becca and I will collect several specimens of hetaerina and extract their DNA. If we have time we will run PCR's looking for a specific gene in their mitochondrion. PCR amplifies specific genes, and with that amplification we can compare the difference among individuals and among species. This can be used in creating phylogenetic trees, but there are many other uses.
When Becca and I went collecting last week we caught a few dragonflies, but mostly mnesaretes, which are closely related to hetaerina. Right now Becca and I are making sure the protocol works so when we do collect hetaerina we will be able to successfully perform a PCR. It can be tricky figuring out the right primers (because they have to match with the DNA of the specimen) and the temperature, as different species and different primers work better with different temperatures.
That might have been boring for most of you, but I love this stuff :) If you find it at all interesting, you should read this paper: http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S1519-566X2011000100011&script=sci_arttext&tlng=pt
Rhainer was an author on it, and he is the reason we are here in Brazil!
No comments:
Post a Comment