While usually found in the field, we had the pleasure of hosting Ryan Greenway from Kansas State University to learn RNAseq library preparation techniques. He spent long hours perfecting his pipetting technique and by the end of his visit he  could pipette small volumes with the multichannel pipette, while blindfolded! Oh, and 108 beautiful RNAseq libraries!

Directly from Ryan: “I visited Dr. Joanna Kelley’s lab at Washington State University for three weeks in order to learn and practice transcriptomic techniques. For part of my dissertation work, I am using an RNA sequencing approach to study the genomic underpinnings of adaptation. Specifically, I created cDNA libraries for paired populations of eight species of Poeciliid fishes inhabiting toxic sulfide springs and nearby benign freshwater streams. Following the sequencing of these libraries, I will be investigating genomic adaptations to life in sulfide springs in each of these population pairs, as well as taking a comparative approach to look for patterns of convergent evolution at the molecular level across these eight species and three additional paired populations of Poecilia mexicana, for which reference transcriptomes have already been developed. By investigating adaptation to similar habitats in a sampling of species spanning a wide phylogenetic gradient I hope to answer fundamental questions about the nature of convergent evolution, be it an optimal adaptive response to selection or rather a constraint due to evolutionary relatedness.”