Nicole West's blog

Time is racing by--in some ways, it's almost a good thing I came back from the cruise because I have so much work to do here in the lab before I leave at the end of the summer.

I spent most of this last week on one of CMOP's research cruises. I had really been looking forward to going out on the Wecoma and living the life aquatic. Unfortunately, as soon as we set out I immediately got terrifically sea sick and had to cut my week-long cruise down to four days. I was really disappointed that my trip had to end prematurely but was also quite relieved to get my feet back on solid ground.

I guess I'll have to cross piracy off my list of possible careers after all.

With the holiday, this last week has been a short one and I’ve had lots of tasks to keep me busy. Things aren’t really going my way with some of samples; I’ve had to redo several PCRs to isolate the problem. I did determine that the enzyme I had been using was on the older side, so hopefully a switch to a newer tube will put an end to my problems.

This week I have been working on processing samples taken from the ocean during a phenomenon called "red water" and from the Columbia River estuary during an estuarine turbidity maximum (ETM). An ETM occurs when the freshwater flowing out on the surface of the river mixes with the saltwater flowing in from the ocean, stirring up lots of nutrients and sediment particles.

On Monday and Tuesday I started in on my RNA extractions. The results? Well, maybe not so good. The yield for both was pretty low so it was a disappointingly small output for a lot of work (each extraction takes a full day to do). Wednesday and Friday were learning days for me as I got to try out a DNA removal from previously extracted RNA samples and then a subsequent RNA clean-up procedure to remove stable and small RNAs from the samples to isolate the mRNA.

When I first arrived at CMOP, the plan was for me to do some computer-based data analysis based on samples Dr. Zuber and Lydie had collected on previous research cruises along the Oregon and Washington coasts and in the Columbia River.