The handoff

Science is a team sport. Imagine, if you will, a relay race. A pair of scientists start off the race in 2021. They run (or swim, if we're being literal) side-by-side while collecting corals in Palau. They collect a total of 4 species, spanning a range of families and growth forms. As they jog together on the track, one of them departs and the other continues alone, carrying all the samples in her arms. One by one, she crushes the coral samples to extract their DNA. This section of the track has several hurdles, so she jumps and glides and keeps crushing the corals, one by one. 

And then, the runner rounds the bend, metaphorical baton in hand, and sees her teammate ahead. She finds fresh motivation and speeds up her pace, charging head-long toward the critical handoff. She passes the coral DNA to her teammate, who then continues along the track.

That's right, friends, I finally handed off all the hundreds of corals I've been working on over the past several months. I have successfully extracted their DNA and handed them off to my collaborators in Boston for sequencing!

This project expands the scope of my team's investigations into coral thermal tolerance in Palau. While the main focus of our research is on Porites lobata, I collected samples from 5 other species from inner lagoons and outer reefs in Palau. I want to find out if their populations have the same patterns as Porites lobata - if other species also have distinct genetic groups with higher thermal tolerance living in the lagoons. We're doing the same sequencing for the 5 species that we did for P. lobata, and we also tested their thermal tolerance during the last two trips. All of those data together will tell a more complete story of coral adaptation to high temperatures. 

It's been a lot of work to extract the DNA from these samples, so I am really excited to hand them off. Now it's all on my teammates to do the sequencing!