The metabarcoding samples collected in October/November in Cabrera Island and Cies Islands are now being processed in the lab.
In February
Mónica Madrigal joined the team, and she is busy processing the 2022
samples of the BigPark project. Welcome Monica!
All samples have already been separated in size fractions using stainless steel sieves of 10 mm, 1 mm, and 64 microns of mesh size. Then the two larger fractions were combined, resulting in one “large” fraction (> 1 mm) and one “small” fraction (< 1 mm). These fractions were homogenized with a blender. Overall, we had 48 replicate samples for sequencing.
We are currently extracting the DNA of these samples using the DNeasy PowerMax Soil Kit. Later on, we will amplify the selected genes from these extracts, and will prepare the genomic libraries that will be sent for sequencing on an Illumina Nova Seq 6000 high throughput sequencing platform.
We cannot
wait to have these sequences, do the bioinformatics tricks, and see how they
fit with those from previous years.
