November!

Whew! We had a great month in October… some highlights:

1) Grant submissions by Jennifer (NSF GRF) and Rachel (MIRA & several others).

2) Good work in the lab done by rotation students Tulip and Kathy.

3) Britessia tackled some new things in the lab, making T3 and T7 polymerase successfully and purifying yeast RNA for us to use in our ISH experiments. This also meant I got to pour some protein gels for the first time since arriving at UGA; still using the same recipe I learned in the Gould lab 15 years ago!

4) Undergrads are starting to get some interesting results with their projects and several have really adjusted well to the independence gained in the 2nd semester in the lab. Our undergrads are also starting to present journal articles to the lab, which has been challenging but fun (for me and hopefully for them, too).

5) Had a great chat with GVSU students (in Dr. Dawn Hart’s class and Dr. Matt Christians’s class) who are doing a first-year CURE using planarians. They are using RNAi to target a subset of genes we’re interested in and have developed their hypotheses. Very excited to see their results!

6) Had some fantastic guests to UGA for the Developmental Biology Symposium (Dr. Claude Desplan, Dr. Vivian Irish, and Dr. John Wallingford). I also hosted Dr. Ken Poss for the CBIO seminar series. I also got to hear my colleague Dr. Nadja Zeltner present her work (she is also new faculty at UGA), which was very fun. I really feel like we got spoiled by all of the exciting science we got to hear about this month!

We’re excited to welcome two new rotation students on Monday: Garrett and Jeremy. Hope that November is just as productive and fun as October!