When we don’t get to sample cute turtles, we get to catch up on things around the lab! During field weeks, we collect samples such as cloacal-oral swabs, blood and shell swabs which need to be extracted. These samples are used to test for pathogens and diseases that may affect these turtles.
You may be wondering, how do extractions work exactly? That’s a great question! Extractions use many reagents to isolate and purify the DNA present in the samples we collected. After the DNA is extracted, we nanodrop the samples to make sure they are pure enough to use for pathogen testing!
On Tuesday, a few of us got back out in the field to help sample salamanders. This only took a couple of hours and it was back to the lab for more extractions!
We are all packed up and ready to get back out into the field and find more turtles!
