SERVICE LEARNING DAY 7

Today is our very last service learning day and we’re all so sad to see it finally come to an end. It is clear tell how much work we’ve put into this group. The seniors from this year who started the group as juniors last year (who have written all the blogs), (juliana, ashton, anna, ryan and sierra) have put in so much effort into making sure this group was successful and helpful to our community. We have learned how to work together as a community and collect various data that could help scientists discover new species. Although our scuba certifications were not in use for most of the year, we were able to find other ways to affect and help our community. It is so sad that our group will not be continuing onto next year.

We began the day as we always do. We all met in our assigned classroom. We all started our morning together for the last time. We began the day with a discussion of the past service learning day and how we will finish off sending our DNA coded organisms to other scientists. We started with previous extractions of existing tubes that contained each DNA of the species we found from the last service learning day. To continue the process of extracting the DNA, we used PCR to get the DNA to copy multiple times. We did this by setting the temperature at almost boiling, then lowering it and raising it multiple times. This process allows us to understand what each of the specific species and organisms are. After repeating this process twice for each DNA sample, we placed the small tubes into a Thermocycler so that the DNA samples could be prepared for the gels to undergo gel electrophoresis. This process is effectively to prove our work was successful so we are able to send the DNA off to a lab that will mass sequence our data and send us the results via email in a few weeks

After putting different substances in the tubes, we went out to collect more traps. Unfortunately when we got to the dock we were trying to unstrap it from the pole of the doc. Since the pole was difficult to get, we accidentally dropped it back into the water and we were not able to take it back with us.

However, when we returned, we took new extractions of others species to start more DNA coding. When we got back to class we continued what we did last service learning day and went through each string in our bucket and the species in the water. This takes some time but it is interesting to see how many species stayed in the bucket after a month. This took some time, but we were able to get a significant part of it done. When the PCR was completed, we each took tubes and put that into the gel. This process is known as Gel Electrophoresis of the PCR product. The DNA is so small at this stage that it is able to make its way through the gel because of the positive attraction at the end of the gel. This tells us how long a strand is and works as a sort of check that we completed the other parts correctly. Our next step was to place them into gel electrophoresis. This process uses electricity to separate DNA fragments by size as they migrate through a gel matrix. Gel electrophoresis can be used to separate DNA fragments. Using a pipette, DNA samples are loaded into slots made in the agarose gel. The DNA samples are colorless, but researchers add a blue "tracking" dye. This is a simple yet tricky process as many things can go wrong. If any other DNA sample is somehow placed into the same gel as one of our species, the DNA sample will be altered. This would make it more difficult for us to read it.We will then be sending this information to the other scientists.

Overall, we believe we had a very productive service learning day and year. We are all so sad to move onto different projects next year and we all wish our seniors the best in college. (even though the seniors wrote this blog like normal :)! )