Working with Assistant Professor Amy Van Cise in the Whale and Dolphin Ecology Lab, Arial Brewer (PhD, SAFS) and Mollie Ball (BS, Marine Biology) were preparing metabarcoding libraries. This means barcoding DNA (or eDNA) in a manner that allows for the simultaneous identification of many taxa within the same sample.
Mollie was on the indexing step, where she adds individual index tags to each of her DNA samples. Arial was one step further—on the gel electrophoresis step—where she visualizes DNA on a gel to make sure it was well amplified in the previous step.
For Arial, she was using this method to describe the microbiome of beluga whales from the endangered Cook Inlet population. Meanwhile, Mollie was using genetic metabarcoding to determine the diet of Arctic predators such as spotted seals, bearded seals and beluga whales, from gastric fluids and fecal samples.
Find out more about their work with Amy Van Cise in the WADE Lab.
