Hey! I’m Elaine. Welcome to my blog from summer 2017, where I researched at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Bocas del Toro and Panama City, Panama for three-and-a-half months. I looked at fish diversity in seagrasses and mangroves in a Caribbean archipelago using environmental DNA sampling. My field research consisted of collecting water samples and filtering them for their DNA. Then, I took these DNA samples, amplified parts of the DNA that code for fish using universal primers, and processed them for next-generation sequencing. This translated the physical samples taken in the water into digital DNA barcodes that were used to identify fish species through bioinformatic analysis. My project is also covered here.

I’m currently a PhD student at the University of Rhode Island working on similar questions. Feel free to reach out to me at:

elaineshen@uri.edu