Entomology members sharpened their molecular analysis skills at Bee Molecular Methods Workshop

Entomology department members Knute Gundersen, Jason Gibbs and Rufus Isaacs attended the first Bee Molecular Methods Workshop in Logan, Utah, Feb. 9-13, 2015.

Entomology department members Knute Gundersen, Jason Gibbs and Rufus Isaacs attended the first Bee Molecular Methods Workshop in Logan, Utah, Feb. 9-13, 2015, to spend a week learning about the background, theory and application of microsatellite analysis to bee ecological research. Supported by the SCRI-funded Integrated Crop Pollination project, Gundersen, Gibbs and Isaacs joined a group of 12 trainees consisting of undergraduates to professors from eight universities in the United States and Canada.

The workshop combined lectures with hands-on experience with PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) of bumble bee legs, sequencing data and the analysis of the outputs to determine the relatedness of individual workers and whether they come from the same or different colonies. This molecular analysis approach has various applications, but is being specifically applied in the Isaac’s lab research in assessing wildflower plantings for enhancing wild bee populations.

The workshop was organized and hosted by Jamie Strange’s lab at the USDA-ARS Pollinating Insects Research Unit and by Utah State University. The teaching was done by Strange along with post-doc Amber Tripodi and graduate student Jonathan Koch, with excellent technical support from Joyce Knoblett.

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