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Society for Marine Mammalogy Conference

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This week I am attending the Society for Marine Mammalogy biennial conference in San Francisco. Around 3,000 marine mammal researchers have descended on the city for a week of workshops, talks, posters and get-togethers. I’ll be speaking on Thursday about our work on the whale gut microbiome.

Today I saw a variety of fascinating talks ranging from ancient whale dietary transitions (Robert Gooddall), to the use of DNA sequencing to determine prey biomass in pinniped feces (Austen Thomas), to the impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on bottlenose dolphin population dynamics and immune function (Lori Schwacke; Teri Rowles; Sylvain De Guise), to the use of gene expression data in understanding factors affecting population decline in sea otters (Elizabeth Bowen).

More updates to come during the week.

Characterizing Dolphin Gene Expression with RNA-Seq

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In order to examine the effects of chronic exposure to pollutants on the dolphin transcriptome, I am working to characterize the skin transcriptome of long-beaked common dolphins (Delphinus capensis) in the Southern California Bight using high throughput sequencing of RNA (RNA-Seq). I am seeking to understand seasonal variation in gene expression and to determine how accumulated heavy metals influence expression patterns. RNA is extracted from dart biopsies provided by Dr. Nicholas Kellar (NOAA Fisheries, Southwest Fisheries Science Center), converted to cDNA and sequenced on an Illumina Hi-Seq sequencer. Concentrations of RNA are quantified at UC Davis’ CAHFS.

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SCaLE Genetics & Genomics Meeting

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I visited UC Riverside’s beautiful campus this Saturday (4/11) for the Southern California Evolutionary Genetics & Genomics meeting. It was a fantastic venue for graduate students, post-docs and faculty to chat informally and to hear some fascinating talks from across evolutionary genetics. I heartily recommend this (free!) meeting to any evolutionary geneticists in SoCal.

UC Riverside

I was particularly interested in Dr. Melissa Sayres talk about a dip in male Y chromosomal diversity around the time agriculture was introduced into different human populations, which could possibly be explained by an increase in variance of male reproductive success due to a more stratified society.

 

NSF GRFP

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I am so excited to say that I’ve received an NSF Pre-doc (GRFP) fellowship, giving me three years of funding! I am developing a sea otter genomics project, including sequencing the Enhydra lutris genome de novo and using low-coverage resequencing to gather SNP data across the species’ range. I plan to estimate the species’ demographic history using a coalescent approach and determine whether certain populations have accumulated deleterious alleles after the extreme population bottleneck due to the fur trade.