Profile

I am forever trying to figure out how I can fit in 1000 hobbies and interests into 1 person. Some of these include marine and terrestrial animal/plant/fungi id, LGBTQIA+ politics, social inequality and social justice, cooking, acrobatics, climbing, surfing and painting. My pronouns are they/them.

I am mostly found in the lab, cultivating microalgae, working with DNA, or identifying and processing samples for DToL. Sometimes I help out in the field, collecting invertebrates and macroalgae.

One of my main tasks as a molecular biologist, is confirming the identity of our specimens using DNA barcoding techniques. This is where I extract and analyse a small section of the DNA which will tell us which species it is.

This would be spread across a few days but my job looks a bit like this:

Field sampling! We head to the shoreline, identify target specimens, record the sampling metadata and take them back to the lab. They will be sorted into separate pots in the aquaria until they are processed for DToL.

Next we identify individuals using a key, we take some photos and metadata before chopping them up for genome sequencing and DNA barcode analysis.

Seaweed is arranged on paper and dried for the Herbarium.

I also cultivate strains of phytoplankton and marine fungi for processing as part of the Darwin Tree of Life project.

My molecular biology work begins with extracting DNA from our seaweed and protist samples using a kit.

Next I will use PCR to amplify genes which can be used to identify the species. I then clean the PCR product up to purify the DNA. If it’s good quality, I’ll send it off in the post to be sequenced (analysed).

When I receive the data, I read through the sequences using a computer program that checks them against global databases of DNA sequences. I inspect the results to make sure they are correct and confirm the species.

Now that we have identified the specimens they can be shipped off to Oxford for genome size estimation, and Sanger for genome sequencing. Time for an ice cream!