What Other Data Can We Collect?
We study shellfish in different ways, and one of the coolest ways is by studying their DNA! From shellfish to people, all living things have DNA. Think about DNA like a cookbook: it contains all of the recipes, or genes, needed for living things to function everyday. For example, there are genes that influence the color of oyster shells, just like human genes that dictate our natural hair color!
After a hatchery experiment, we can look at the DNA from oysters in different treatments to see how changes in the environment influence their genes! To do this, we need to collect DNA from the oysters. However, DNA is super tiny — you can’t even see it with a microscope — and is hard to get to because it is inside of living things! Instead, we have to work in a laboratory and use a special process to get DNA called DNA isolation.
The video below shows Sam, a Roberts Lab member, going through the process of isolating DNA from oysters. To start out, Sam makes sure that he has all of his materials ready on his lab bench: pipets, pipet tips, trays for holding tubes, blue mini pestles for smushing the oyster tissue in the tubes, centrifuge that spins the tubes really fast to help separate the DNA, tools for opening the oysters (shucking), special chemicals (reagents) that isolate the DNA, and gloves for safety!
Sam begins by opening the oyster to remove the tissue that he wants to get the DNA from. He then uses a chemical called DNAzol that helps break down the tissue that holds the DNA. He uses a blue tiny pestle to mash up the tissue while it’s in the liquid to make isolation even easier. He then uses different chemicals in a specific process to isolate the DNA! At the end, the oyster DNA is sitting in a little bit of water in the bottom of the tubes!
Since we can’t see DNA, how do we know how much we isolated? Sam takes the DNA over to a machine called a Nanodrop. This machine can tell us how much DNA we isolated! If we isolate enough DNA, we can use it to understand how different environments impact oyster genes!