Finally, a return to field research! After sitting out 2020 because of risk to our team and communities we would visit from the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, and thanks to vaccination and better awareness of disease prevention, the team travelled to Sitka, Alaska (Sheet’ká) to work with colleagues at the University of Alaska Southeast. In 2019, Ian… Read More Snowy Sitka Sea Cucumbers

It’s been a couple of months since the last post on the team’s progress. This isn’t because we haven’t been working hard towards the two projects in the lab – far from it – but rather we’ve been inundated with super cool results that have not only given us new insight into the role of… Read More Field season is alive!

Summer is just over a month finished in Ithaca – at least from a climatic standpoint. With only 3 weeks to go before classes begin again for students at Cornell, it feels like summer is fading. But you’d never guess it in our lab, where things have been heating up considerably as we pursue both… Read More Dog days of summer?

Summer’s been exceptionally hot and steamy in Ithaca, which means it’s been a fantastic time to be in the lab with good air conditioning. Our aquarium room is currently at 70oF (tracking Cape Cod water temperatures) – which is a great escape! For the last week, Jay and Ian have been hard at work in… Read More Optodes are really cool

Lots of cool stuff coming out of the lab right now – Summer has already been productive and we’re exploring new approaches to address our hypotheses. Earlier this year, in collaboration with scientists at UGA, UCSC, SFSU, and UNCW, we published the results of our 7-year investigation into the etiology of Sea Star Wasting Disease,… Read More It worked!

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has brought with it a variety of new (and newly-applied) approaches in science and public health. mRNA vaccines have been given to over 160 million US residents – a “technology” (mRNA isn’t exactly technology, but the delivery method is certainly novel) which has not been widely applied in the past. While there… Read More And then we tried a new approach…

Summer is almost here, but classes are already done for the semester, and the lab has been hard at work on a couple of our new projects- with some promising results to boot! After a [somewhat frustrating] time validating PCR-based protocols for detecting aquatic flaviviruses in sea cucumbers from January – April, we finally had… Read More Aquariums, Gels, and Fieldwork!

After a frustrating several months of trial and error, the team is back in action looking at sea cucumber aiFVs. We now have a validated method of detecting aiFVs in sea cucumber tissues – which involves the following steps: Tissue collection, preservation, RNA extraction and copy DNA (cDNA) synthesis Quantitative reverse transcriptase PCR (qRT-PCR) targeting… Read More aiFVs are go!

Jordan has successfully completed his A-Exam! His project focuses on the role of microorganisms in seagrass health, focusing on microbial respiration, sulfide reduction/oxidation, and eutrophication. He will be collaborating with Bob Howarth, Roxanne Marino, Katie Haviland, and Melanie Hayn in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (Cornell) who have performed long-term research in West… Read More Congratulations Jordan!

It’s been a frustrating time over the last few weeks in the lab trying to amplify, clone and sequence aquatic invertebrate flaviviruses from holothurian samples. Earlier, we found that we could successfully amplify (by PCR) a product of expected size from at least one Apostichopus (Parastichopus) californicus sample collected in 2016. However, upon cloning (and… Read More aiFVs do exist, after all!