You may take my title as literally taking over the climb of Hills LOL for two reasons, the project I am continuing was initiated by Mat Hill. He worked on it for two semesters and although he made great progress, he kept struggling with shearing of the Palo Verde DNA during extraction. After reading his posts and research paper, I am feeling a little overwhelmed hehe I can't help but wonder what my results are going to be when I am not even closely as literate as him about this subject. However, I shall climb this "hill" even if the odds are against me hehe I will do my best to hopefully provide the data to back up his claim that Palo Verdes clone themselves as a root adaptation to thrive in the harsh conditions of the Sonoran Desert.
The second literal hill I might climb soon is when I go out and collect fresh specimens in the plot he designated for study. That will be fun as well!!
This week I can summarize my work as getting familiar with my project, the background and protocol, as well as equipment and reagents involved for the DNA extraction, Electrophoresis and PCR
To our two new Scholars Bethany and Cel, welcome and may you be very successful and enjoy this enriching experience!!
Hill's research paper
Hill's Blog has been very useful to get to know the project but also the mind behind it
