Student Research at Duke

A little more information about the Yoder lab…

Basically, all of the research that is conducted in Dr. Yoder’s lab concerns the island of Madagascar. The cool thing about Madagascar is the incredible amount of biodiversity: there are already hundreds of thousands of observed species, and new species are being discovered as I type. The REALLY cool thing is the fact that more than 95% of all these species are endemic and can be found only in Madagascar. Like these cute little guys:

So anyways, everyone in the lab is studying a different Malagasy species to see how they’ve evolved, or how physical barriers (ie rivers, mountains) have affected their evolution. My main project looks at a few different species of Tomato frogs, which are not as cute as mouse lemurs but still pretty funky looking:

.

As of right now I’m still waiting for the samples to arrive from Paris, but then I’ll be off isolating, amplifying, and sequencing till my hands fall off from overpipetting.

On a side note, today Steve Goodman came all the way from Madagascar for a visit. According to Dr. Yoder, Steve has done more to study the biota in Madagascar than any living human…and after hearing him speak at the Lemur Center this afternoon, I definitely believe her. He’s spent over 19 years exploring the island and discovering new species. I found this article about him online: “Madagascar Tames the Bohemian of Biology”…he’s had quite a career. I’ve never been to Madagascar and knew absolutely nothing about it until a week ago, but his presentation was great and really makes me want to spend time there myself.

After the speech, the lab and I went on a tour of the Lemur Center (thanks to Aaron, who happened to be at Dr. Goodman’s speech as well). Unfortunately, I forgot my camera today, but hopefully I’ll go back and take some pictures because lemurs are so darn cute. There are some weird kinds though…like the ones with the anal-genital scent glands and therefore rub their butt on every surface to claim their territory. Thank god lemurs and humans evolved differently.

Myth #1: Scientists are crazed workhorses

I mentioned before that I had (still have?) a pretty skewed idea of what “lab life” is like…but today, I realized something monumental: scientists don’t work all the time, 24/7. There IS such a thing as “down time” (thank god!). No one is expected to survive 7 straight hours of micropipetting (unless you have ridiculous forearm muscles).

So to honor my downtime, I snapped some pictures of the Yoder lab. The lab is bright and shiny and brand new; they just relocated this past February. Hopefully I won’t break anything new and expensive in the next eight weeks…

Entrance to the Yoder Lab

a pretty nifty lab bench

the conference room (notice the flowers in the flask…scientists are crafty, too!)

…and my best attempt at a self portrait with some gels

Back to work!