It’s February! Which mean’s I’ve spent the first part of this year trying (and failing) to make it past the protocol phase of RNA extractions. But I did some other things too…I think.

January Goals Recap

Coral Transcriptomics:

• I’m working on the coral samples, but we have yet to nail down a protocol that provides sufficient yield and quality!
• Switched from one species to another since the second species may be easier to work with

Killifish Methylation and Expression:

• I didn’t get the data yet, so I didn’t work on this and focused on the coral extraction protocol instead!

Gigas Gonad Methylation:

• I made progress on the discussion! But not enough to finish it.

Virginica Gonad Methylation:

• Participated in weekly discussions with Sam and Steven about analyses. Steven and I decided to use this project for CEABIGR, which means there’s nothing I have to do for this project by myself.

Ocean Acidification and Reproduction Review:

• Integrated new papers into main text and supplementary material
• Included new studies in revised Figure 2

Other:

• Updated WGCNA methods and results for the eelgrass paper
• Had a great meeting with CAN to discuss projects!
• Put more thought into potential future projects
• Developed surveys for the postdoctoral mentoring program

February Goals

Gigas Gonad Methylation:

• FINALLY finish the discussion
• Revise the introduction and abstract
• Send to Steven for edits
• Submit to a journal and bioRXiv

Coral Transcriptomics:

• Continue testing extraction protocol to identify a successful method
• Use gel to check RNA integrity
• Extract all samples possible

Killifish Methylation and Expression:

• Review BAT mapping and DMR identification protocol
• Start mapping procedure for methylation data
• Identify protocol for RNA-Seq data

Ocean Acidification and Reproduction Review:

• Revise discussion section
• Complete a full read-through of the main text and supplementary material

Other:

• Contribute to eelgrass transcriptomics paper
• Think more about potential projects
• Send out postdoctoral mentorship survey
• Coordinate pre-application postdoctoral mentoring program
• Apply to any relevant faculty positions, funding opportunities, or postdocs

Deep Freeze

After a conversation with CAN, I realized that I’m taking too much on! They suggested I table some projects for a while, so here are things that are not immediate enough to be on the backburner, so they’re stuck in the deep freeze.

Hawaii Gigas Methylation:

• Address Rajan’s edits
• Review DSS script and determine if I should go back to methylKit for better interpretation
• Extract SNPs with EpiDiverse and create a relatedness matrix
• Look at methylation islands and non-methylated regions
• Examine overlaps between DML and other epigenomic datasets from Sascha