Author: Laura ForrestPage 6 of 6
Molecular laboratory technician and bryologist, focusing on liverworts and DNA barcoding, with a PhD in Begoniaceae phylogenetics.
The mantra for many years for next generation sequencing has been, like “garbage in, garbage out”, that the optimal starting point is high quality, high molecular weight DNA….
In March this year, having already chosen and obtained the plant material that we were going to use for our NBAF project on using a hybrid bait protocol…
Having chosen Inga umbellifera as the study organism for our NBAF-funded project to test the use of hybrid baits for recovery of DNA sequences from herbarium material, we…
About 300 species of Inga (Leguminosae: Mimosoideae: Ingeae) grow in lowland and montane rain forest throughout the humid tropical zone, from Mexico to Uruguay. Most species diversity is…
In February this year, Dr Catherine Kidner, Dr Michelle Hart, Dr James Nicholls and I were awarded an NBAF pilot grant by NERC to explore the use of…
Twenty-five participants from 13 countries have just attended a symposium on complex thalloid liverworts in Edinburgh #Marchantia2015. The meeting also included two teleconferences (from Australia, John Bowman, Monash…
The complex thalloid liverworts, or Marchantiopsida, are one of the oldest land plant lineages, and contain a bewildering array of morphologies, ranging from comparatively simple plants like Blasia,…
We are hosting a small two-day workshop at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh on the 11th-12th September 2014 to discuss issues around morphologically cryptic species, whether we can…
As a follow-on to my post about why bryophytes are important is this thoughtful piece by Dr Janice Glime, author of the comprehensive and freely downloadable book Bryophyte…
As someone who has used taxpayers’ money to fund research on bryophytes (the collective term for mosses, liverworts and hornworts), ‘But why do bryophytes actually matter?’ is one…
Part 1: The Very Basics The analyses are finally over, you can fill in those blanks in the results section, and really start dealing with all those hypotheses…
It’s a confusing world out there – betaine, DMSO, bovine serum albumin (BSA), trehalose, glycerol, formamide – the list of things that you can throw into a PCR…