Bouillonia

Some of the specimens I received from Canada. 
They may look like frozen mush now, but in life, 
they are beautiful and flower-like. 

A few weeks ago, I got an email from a PhD student in Canada. She had some specimens of a species that I had written a paper on - Bouillonia cornucopia. She was pretty sure of the species identification, but before proceeding with her analysis, she wanted to be 100% sure. Using a combination of morphology and genetics is usually the best plan for taxonomy, so I offered to help with the molecular part. 

When the specimens arrived in my lab, I recognized them immediately. Yep, they certainly looked like the Bouillonia cornucopia individuals I had worked on previously. With morphological support for the hypothesized identification, the next step was genetics. 

My lab has recently been honing our molecular biology skills and had some real success. I took advantage of all that recent progress and applied the same methods that had worked so well for corals to the hydroids in front of me. I extracted the DNA and copied one region using PCR. My first attempt was actually not spectacular - in fact, I'm not sure it worked at all. The gel showed no evidence of the strong, bright bands you want to see that indicate dense copies of DNA. For a second round, I tried a different primer - the same one we had used for the corals - and my gel was much better. Clear, bright bands showed up in every row. The DNA had been copied and was ready for sequencing. 

I don't have results back yet, but I'm pretty confident of what they'll show. It's been fun helping out a fellow scientist, revisiting a species I had previously worked on, and applying my lab's new genetics procedures - all for Bouillonia cornucopia!