Behavioral Ecology Blog

The dots that look like buildings in the center of the image are the reserve buildings. I trap in the mountains near there. Make sure to zoom in/out to get a good feel about where I work.
Map

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Please feel free to use the following protocol for DNA extraction from tissue that I have developed. I use if primarily on small pieces of pinna I excise from Peromyscus. Yield is at least 50uL of >500ng/uL DNA
Protocol for DNA extraction.
I have a few other protocols, including some for TA cloning, msat work, DNA [...]

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A neat article supporting my general claim that everything suffers from STD’s in one fashion or another..
Birds, Bees, and STDs - sexually transmitted diseases in flowers

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This is me working with a set of clones. I am cloning the 3rd exon of DRB. Bacterial cells (white colonies, see below) grown on agar plates contain the gene sequence.

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This is an example of what raw sequence data looks like. Each base is labelled with a unique fluorescent color which is then detected by a fancy machine. Here, y-axis is intensity, with the higher the peak the better. This is mitochondrial DNA from Peromyscus eremicus.

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So these tracings are what the raw microsatellite data looks like. The x-axis is size masures in base pairs, the y-axis is a measure of intensity. The more intense, the stronger the PCR reaction and confidence (all else being equal). The 2 images represent 2 different animals. For each animal [...]

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Finally!!! Results from all the cloning attempts. For those of you that dont know- I’ve been having problems with the transformation step in the cloning protocol. Tried something a little different yesterday- and seems to have worked. The next step is to do a clone-check and see that the bacteria have the insert [...]

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Too cute huh…

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Hooray!! I have another class II gene in Peromyscus (DQA). I’m Cloning tommorrow, and will post the results soon.
I have primers for 2 Class I genes on order (M3 and M4 regions). If these guys work, I should have a complete assay and be ready for the full on analysis looking at how [...]

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I just finished the application for a NSF fellowship. Wow, what process! I spent ~200 hours over several weeks working on a proposal, personal statement, and statement of previous research experience. The fellowship is worth $120K over 3 years and is a huge accomplishment if awarded. Let’s keep our our [...]

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