Hello, patient readers! I've taken quite the hiatus from posting lately. I guess getting married and going on honeymoon has been my excuse thus far. But now that I'm back at my home base in Florida it's time to get some work done, which includes writing about work as well!
After 3 trips out to the panhandle-the latest trip was just yesterday-I have "enough" samples that I'm comfortable with for my field study. Of course there really is no such thing as too many samples but don't have enough research funds (or quite frankly enough arms) to process anything more than what I have now. So far I've isolated RNA from nearly 250 tissues samples (with a few of the new samples to finish up still) and now I'm ready to move on to the more data-centric part of the project (i.e. where I actually get data instead of doing lab monkey work all day). My committee member Dr. Pine was incredibly helpful in letting me use his equipment and getting me in touch with some helpful folks in fisheries...definitely could not have done this project without him!
I'm also working on finishing up the data analysis from the microarray samples I ran earlier this summer. Some of my data looks a bit goofy so I need to take the time to figure out if it's really goofy or if I just input the data into the program incorrectly (with how complicated the software is, the latter wouldn't surprise me!). I've also got a couple more exposure experiments to run in the near future and always have a couple little things to do in the lab.
In the next couple of weeks I also need to prepare my departmental seminar presentation, and then in mid-November I'm heading to Long Beach, CA for the SETAC meeting and I'll have a presentation there as well. Looks to be a busy few weeks but I'll definitely do better at keeping the blog updated now that my new life as a married woman has reached a more normal level again.
Thanks for your patience with the slow posting and stay tuned for more updates soon!
-Erica Brockmeier
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