Month: July 2022

NCMA2022 experiment update: Phenotyping 1,147 fish

Groton, 24 July 2022. A remarkable week ends with a sense of pride, accomplishment and a good dose of exhaustion. After more than two months of rearing, the silversides from our crosses in May have grown big, and at least for the warm, 26C treatment, they reached their final, intended size (~40 mm). Our rearing job came to a successful end, and now post-doctoral researcher Jessica Rick and PhD-student Maria Akopyan came back to the Rankin Lab equipped with hundreds of tubes and lots of RNAlater to finalize the sampling. This involved measuring the critical sustained swim speed of every individual fish, followed by meticulous measurements, photographs, and eventually an individual tube for preservation in RNAlater. Over the course of 9 days (and over 10h of work each day), the team measured 1,147 fish, which ranged in size between 15 and 50 mm. A big hat tip to the hard-working geneticists!

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On 16 July 2022, Maria (left) and Jessi (right) are working meticulously through their individual sampling protocol of silversides reared for two months at 26C. Every rearing container contains about 40 fish.

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On 21 July 2022, most of the rearing containers have been sampled and only 5 remain.

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Maria is tackling individual length and weight measurments, photographing, labeling and preserving of silversides.

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The old swim flume that has seen its fair share of experimental work, is being put to good use once again.

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To calibrate the dial of the swim flume to flow speeds, we use dye and video recording.


Now, our rearing job still continues until the crosses in the 20C treatment reach their final size, when the second session of phenotyping will need to happen. And of course, there iare so many more steps to follow. Stay tuned.

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On 16 July 2022, Maria looks concentrated while taking a picture of a reared silverside.