Foot Knockdown

I just randomly did a vivisection of a mussel and injected rhodamine into the foot, just to see how far the solution traveled, and even when I injected the mussel at the base of the foot, the dye went all the way to the tip of the foot! Which means my siRNA’s will get to where they need to go!

I am about to buy the siRNA’s, I just need a negative control, gonna call IDT about the sequence of their predesigned negative control OR I’m going to make my own negative control using a tool on Genscript. If the predesigned one works in mussels though (if they have the sequence), I’m just going to use that because it’s cheaper.

I’m also going to try anesthetizing and injecting the gallos at the base of the foot to see if that allows them to make byssal threads faster than if inject them right at the tip. They should be anesthetizing now, I also put them in old MgCl solution that I’ve already used so we’ll see if the solution can be multi-use.

Thread Quality

The mussels laid more threads the further into the tank they were (the LESS flow they had), and the outside mussel laid 0 threads. I put in a new mussel on the outside today, as well as some more just behind the initial group, just to see what happens. Getting them to lay threads is hard!

We also just ordered a ton of mica for this. Hopefully the right kind.

Ramping pilot

I think I may have accidentally switched the ramping and acute trials today just before I did respirometry, so I’m not going to use the trial. I’m still taking the dry weights of the mussels though, for kicks.

Quote of the day

“There’s not enough enrichment in my enclosure and pretty soon I’ll need to act out” - @slowlittleguy on Twitter