Maine is the coolest!

I arrived in Maine Sunday evening. By Monday evening I had jumped into the frigid ocean for a night swim and hiked one of the mountains in Acadia National Park. Things kind of slowed down for the rest of the week but tonight I'm going in to Bar Harbor to hang out for the evening and tomorrow morning I'm climing the second highest peak on the island with some friends. The environment in my lab is way more relaxed than anything I have experienced. We get there early in the morning but often leave before 5pm for the day. We take a long lunch break where Nancy, the lab cook makes us a wonderful lunch and then go out to catch killifish in the river before returning back to the lab. I haven't started my project yet but basically I've been working with these oligonucleotides called morpholinos to try and get the to skip and exon in the pre-translational mRNA in the opercular and gill cells of the fundulus. So a typical day starts with making and running a gel, isolating mRNA from the fish organs and running a pcr. Eventually, I will be doing my own project with the urotensin II receptor in the gills of fish. Urotensin is basically a potent vasoconstrictor and there's some evidence that it might play a role in osmoregulation as well so I will be sequencing the receptor and looking at its expression and physiological role in fish. Fun :) Then I will also be doing some physiological work with a special chamber where you can measure the flux of ions across the gill by measuring the voltage it takes to nullify the current within the chamber. I'm probably most excited by this work. As promised to some of you, I finally have some pictures of the lab. I will try and get more of Acadia and Bar Harbor this weekend.



Daisies enjoying the ocean




My lab...note how it overlooks the ocean :)





Chairs to sit on and ponder the ocean and possibly your pcr results



The ocean as seen from the lab




More ocean from MDIBL property




Star point by the dock in the lab