Genetics Sourdough Experiment

     It's definitely been a while since I've updated my blog (I've been very busy over the past two weeks as the semesters about to start reaching its closing point). But, about a week-and-a-half ago, I started working a little bit with CLC (a genomics workbench used to analyze the microbial species present in our sourdough starters). MY EXPERIENCE     The process of working through the protocols in CLC was actually a bit easier than I expected. I noticed that the direction said that it would take a while and it might be pretty challenging, so a part of me was definitely worried that it would be too difficult for me to figure out. However, by making sure that I was following the directions (and by doing exactly what was happening in the screenshots), everything went smoother than I expected it would.     While the process was definitely easier than I expected, it took just about the amount of time I thought it would. I worked o...

      Now that we've finished our starters, they're in the process of being sequenced, and we know a little bit more about DNA sequencing, we're going to hop into what exactly we're sequencing and what kind of research questions we can answer with what we're sequencing. SO, WHAT ARE WE SEQUENCING EXACTLY?      We're sequencing specific regions of the genomic DNA, called the 16S rRNA, which is typically used when sequencing bacteria, and the ITS region, which is typically used when sequencing fungi and other eukaryotic organisms. The method by which we're only sequencing these two regions is referred to as amplicon-based metagenomic sequencing (where amplicons are just little pieces of the DNA).       If we had sequenced the entirety of the DNA of the starters, then we would've performed shotgun metagenomic sequencing, which leads to wondering, why did we choose the method we did to sequence our DNA? THE ENTIRE DN...