Category: SciencePage 18 of 36
Latest science blog posts from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
Henry McBeath was from Rogart in Sutherland, born in November 1878 to James McBeath, a farm grieve (foreman) and his wife Johan from Rovie, a farm in Rogart…
Following on from the rather unpredictable results we obtained from fragmenting duplicate aliquots of CTAB-extracted Polytrichum DNA in the Bioruptor, Isuru cleaned aliquots of IK31 and IK53 using…
When we’re working out a protocol or troubleshooting, we spend a lot of time quantifying small quantities of fluids, looking at DNA concentrations on the DeNovix, running tapes…
We started our lab work on the Polytrichum hybrid baits project on the 1st of October, by normalising some CTAB-extracted DNA with 0.1X TE to 55 µL of…
The current Next Gen Sequencing lab project at the Botanics involves looking at the phylogeny of Polytrichum section Polytrichum, using hybrid capture. Polytrichum commune, photographed by David Bell…
After testing bead-to-sample ratios of 30:50, 35:50, 40:50, 50:50 and 60:50 on a Thermo Scientific™ GeneRuler™ 50 bp DNA Ladder, using Beckman Coulter AMPure XP beads, we focused…
When we made our Begonia libraries, working with (in some cases) relatively small quantities of very degraded DNA, we should have diluted the adaptors. We didn’t. Consequently, we…
By Helen Bennett, Library & Archives Volunteer New light has been shed on the creation of Logan Garden by a previously unknown album of photographs and watercolours recently…
By Hannah Swan Before publisher’s bindings were de rigueur, texts came in flimsy paper ‘wrappers’, leaving the permanent binding to the new owner. Because of this, many books from…
For one of the taxa in our study set, Begonia scottii (living collection no. 20170076), we made a few replicate DNA extractions using Qiagen DNeasy plant mini-kits, and…
“It’ll stink! Tell me if you can’t stand it. My cat adores it.” Sweaty armpits, musty old rooms, smelly feet were all attempts at describing the smell of…
The set of DNA extractions from one of our test plants (#8, Begonia stictopoda RBGE accession 20170115) contained rather low concentrations of DNA. We decided against preparing NGS…
Oxytropis halleri commonly known as Mountain Milk-vetch is a Nationally Rare plant confined only to Scotland. The species can be found at two inland locations but most populations…
Andrew Ewing Calder was born in Stockbridge, Edinburgh, on the 12th January 1884 to Robert Calder, a blacksmith, and his wife Sarah Jane, who was a tailoress. Calder…
There’s an exciting project, The 10KP (10,000 Plants) Genome Sequencing Project, that aims to sequence and characterize representative genomes from every major clade of embryophytes, green algae, and…
‘Hai visto il polpo?’ *Waves arms to impersonate octopus* ‘Its warm today isn’t it mate’ I said while flapping my arms back to him My current boss called…
I spotted this unusual fern on a shipment that had come to Vannucci from Japan. The 8-20cm long plants were clinging to the trunk and underside of branches…
Protecting Potatoes is a new plant display with interpretation for summer 2018 at the Botanics. It can be found in the Demonstration Garden and the Temperate Palm House,…
On the 18th July 2018 we celebrate the 100th birthday of the Pyrus pashia tree growing on the Pyrus lawn.
The dry and montane forests of the Andes are vital for the lives of tens of millions of people in western South America. Their socio-economic worth in cycling…