Peak of fashion

Today was a interesting and fun filled day for us here at Connell Labs. Everyone in the lab met up for a nice lab lunch and so we could discuss various things that we have been working on.

Our first order of business was a bit more of a personal one. Caleb, had his second child born last week and so we bought him some items to help him along. These items included about 400 diapers, and the stuff pictured below.

Pictured: The peak of style. 

We then had our lunch. After lunch we had a delicious apple pie cooked by Megan. While eating the pie, Amber and Janice attempted to describe how their current project works. 

The chopsticks bind with the fork which can then be used with RNA to... 

Which, fairly quickly got out of hand. 

And once the forks have aligned THEY WILL MAKE ME INVINCIBLE AND I WILL RULE THE WORLD!!

AH HA HA HA HA HA!!!!

After that we all went outside and took some pictures with our brand new and very stylish YEASTY BOY BOWLING SHIRTS!

Pictured: The peak of style

After that we decided that we had to make it official, we had to become the most stylish lab on campus, if not the world. To do that, we needed to do something about our dull, white, and dreary lab coats. We decided that it was time to spice them up a bit, and what better way than with TIE  DYE!!!

Pictured: The peak of fashion

The coats are currently drying, but I promise that as soon as they are finished, pictures will be posted. 

Thats all for today ! See you all soon!

By Ben Segee

New Addition Update

We here at Connell Labs would like to wish a very happy birthday to Ira Alder Slemmons. May you enjoy many more.

By Ben Segee

New Addition

Today is a very special day for Mr. Slemmons, one of our research technicians. 

This guy

Caleb is not in the lab today because apparently the birth of his second child is more important than looking at gene sequences for various Antarctic goos. 

We won't hold that against him though. 

Instead, we here at Connell Labs would like to wish him and his wife good luck, and a preemptive congratulations. We all look forward to hearing the good news. 

By Ben Segee

Soil Washing

We recently looked back at the things we have posted on this blog so far and noticed that very little has actually been posted about the work that we do. Sure there have been mentions about where we collect samples but we don't have much about what we do with those samples.

Today, that will be remedied! Prepare yourself for an explanation of SOIL WASHING!!!

Soil washing is more than simply the most oxymoronic process we have. It is also a method of turning this

Into this

If you can't tell, there is a bit of mud at the bottom. 

Now, bear with me here for a minuet, I know what your thinking, "So, you turn dirt into a small test tube of dirt?"

Well, yes kinda. But it is cooler than that. What we do is take a sample of Antarctic soil and wash it to collect all of the microscopic fungus. Once we have the fungus concentrated we can extract DNA from it and then run an ARISA to figure out what sorts of organisms are in it.

Here is how soil washing works.

First, we take a soil sample and put some water into it. Then we take the whole thing and put it into a nifty device called a shaker.

SUPER ADVANCED SHAKING TECHNOLOGY!

The shaker does exactly what it sounds like it does. It shakes the sample around. This causes small particles of mud and fungus to become suspended in the water.


After the soil has been shaking for half an hour we take the soil out of the shaker and pour the muddy water water into a test tube. We then put the test tube into a machine called a Centrifuge.

Yes, it is taped to the table.

A centrifuge is a device that works along the same lines as spinning a bucket of water in a circle without any water falling out does. The centrifuge spins the samples around at high speeds. This causes everything to be forced to the bottom of the tube. The suspended yeast and mud collect there forming a mud pellet.

Look at all the mud. 

We then dump off the left over water and repeat the process about 20 times to make sure that we get all the mud and fungus out of the sample.

And that is how you wash soil.

By Ben Segee

Mt Erebus

Mt. Erebus, aptly named after the greek god of darkness, is an active volcano located in the antarctic. Only the bravest (or foolhardy) of explorers venture near it's lava filled crater, and even then, only with the most advanced safety equipment available.

Ya'know a helmet might be a good idea. 

Just kidding. 

While Erebus is in fact the greek god of darkness, Mt. Erebus is not actually named after him. Mt. Erebus is named after one of the ships Captain James Clark Ross took with him on his 1840 Antarctic Expedition (The other ship Ross brought was named Terror. To be honest, he sounds like a scary man.).

Mt. Erebus is also another location that we get our fungus samples from, and, as it turns out, can also be found on google maps. 

Our samples from Mt. Erebus come from inside large ice structures called fumaroles. 

These structures are formed when hot gas escapes from the volcano. The hot gas cools quickly when it makes contact with the cold outside air and the water vapor inside of it freezes, leaving behind ice. Over time this ice builds up forming these large moist hollow caves that are a perfect growing environment for fungi. 

We dig holes into these fumaroles... 

go inside the caves they have created...

Everyone say "Hi" to Hubert!

 and leave traps for the fungus.

The fungus will never suspect a thing!

Mt. Erebus is also the only location in the world where large Erebus Crystals can be found. 

Erebus crystals are formed inside of the lava lake in Mt. Erebus's crater. 

We were serious about the lava lake. 

The crystals cool inside of the lava lake and sink to the bottom. When an explosion occurs, "Bombs" of crystals and lava are thrown out of the crater. The lava hardens but is quickly eroded away, leaving behind the crystals. 

 Unpolished Erebus Crystal

Polished Erebus Crystal

That's all for now. Here are some more pictures of Mt. Erebus for anybody who wants to see more. 

 Note, these were different helicopters. 

Photos by Laurie Connell
By Ben Segee

Carboy meltdown

Hey all,
Soon some work is going to be done on the distilled water pipes in our building, which is fine except that for the time that they are working on the pipes, we won't be able to get any distilled water (which is important to some of our work), so we decided to stock up.

We decided to take one of our carboys and fill it up with distilled water, figuring that would be enough to hold us over.

For those of you who don't know, this is what a carboy looks like.

Before we did that though, we decided that it might be a good idea to autoclave it first, just to make sure it was sterile. 

An autoclave is essentially a giant pressure cooker. We put our dishes (beakers, test tubes, graduated cylinders, etc) in it and it heats up to about 121 degrees C and goes up to around 18 psi. This kills any nasties that might still be on our dishes so we don't contaminate any of our samples. 

Normally our carboys don't have a problem in the autoclave, however this particular one was probably made of a different material because when we took it out of the autoclave, instead of looking like this...

It looked like this...

If you had trouble spotting the difference, here is a direct comparison

Whoops. 

By Ben Segee

Lake Fryxell

Lake Fryxell (located in Taylor Valley, Antarctic) is one of the locations that we receive our Antarctic soil and fungi samples from. We also discovered recently that Lake Fryxell can actually be found on google maps. The satellite image is not very detailed though, so included with this post are some up close photographs of Lake Fryxell and Taylor Valley.

Photos by Laurie Connell

By Ben Segee