May Goals and Dailies

goals, daily
Author

Megan Ewing

Published

May 15, 2025

May Goals:

  • rphil paper: This month we’re trying to get the rphil paper out. So wrapping up edits for that and getting a discussion in

  • outreach: Open house is this month, planning and prep for that

  • dont skip class: Just finished midterm! So just keep chuggin along with coursework

  • be a good TA: Get grades out to 370 students within reasonable timeframe & be prepared to help students with their methods

  • slight dream goal: run blast for my bivalves to get a gene list before summer

Daily Updates

May 1

447 lecture

Started grading gel writeups for 370 and run 370 lab

addressed remaining comments in rphil MS and updated tables/figures and reran enrichment with updated background

created clean GH repo for rphil work that excludes unused files and analyses

May 2

370 lecture & lab

Continued/finished grading gel writeups for 370 and run 370 lab

worked on some lit review for papers emma sent and started drafting part of discussion

May 7

370 lecture & office hours

continued lit review and discussion drafting

created folder for 2025 open house & updated activity

447 homework

May 8

447 homework

447 lecture

open house prep meeting + lab meeting

447 lab

May 9

370 lecture

meeting with mac and emma to discuss methods/results updates and discussion draft 1

started updated discussion outline

back to lit review

May 12

370 lecture & planning meeting

finished additional methods/results update

updated rphil figure / tables, and created/added supp table (GO info) to folder

finished (minus one sub section) updated discussion draft and added to MS

May 13

447 lecture

worked on addressing initial comments on updated discussion for rphil

personal errand which took a little bit of time (related to last months personal emergency situation)

short meeting with Andy to get everything squared away for open house / lobster tank

back to lit review

447 lab

May 14

370 lecture and extra planning meeting because course organization post week 7 is f****d with little to no documentation from previous quarters….

370 office hours – ran long. had ~7 students with long form questions. office hour? more like office 3 hour

sent out open house info

went back to lit review for last part of day to continue progress towards addressing Mac & Emmas discussion comments

May 15

gathered open house materials

447 lecture

brief follow up meeting with callum and andy on live clam ‘disposal’ instructions + ensuring access to aquarium roon

update lab notebook for the month so far (oopsies)

lab meeting

370 lab

rest of day: lit review & keep chippin away at discussion comments if time (not optimistic)

Who’s Lit is it Anyways?

This month has been a lot of paper hunting. Here’s a list of some of the papers from the last two weeks I’ve been digging through. A big thing I’ve been looking for is to get a general understanding of what might be typical differences in egg gene expression. Whether its as a results of parental priming to OA, spawn timing, immune system stimulation, etc. How much of an impact is parental contributions really having on egg expression?

A lot of the lit out there seems to be looking at priming within a generation, which seems to yield somewhat substantial differences between control and treatment groups (lots of DEGs). But when looking at eggs from treated vs control parents, there is less of a difference (few DEGs).

My shift now (5/15) is to find literature to continue fleshing out these different responses as a result of different life stages, different tissue types being analyzed, different types of stressors, etc. And also to dive deeper into the functional interpretation of the genes to see what kind of impact our DEGs have been having in other bivalves, and if they have been observed as DEGs in similar studies to ours.

  • https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0172805

  • Yaamini - https://academic.oup.com/eep/article/10/1/dvae018/7764574#498950252

  • Func. groups (drosophila) - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/mrd.1080260310

  • Goby - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12862-018-1132-2#Sec3

  • Pco2 c. virginica - https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/marine-science/articles/10.3389/fmars.2020.566419/full

  • McNally EM, Downey-Wall AM, Titmuss FD et al. Parental exposure of Eastern oysters (Crassostrea virginica) to elevated pCO 2 mitigates its negative effects on early larval shell growth and morphology.

  • Strader. OA responses in bivalves review – https://frontiersinzoology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12983-020-0350-9

  • Gurr 2022 – single generation exposure, 429 DEGs @ 14 days

  • Kelly – Kelly MW, Padilla-Gamiño JL, Hofmann GE. High pCO 2 affects body size, but not gene expression in larvae of the California mussel (Mytilus californianus).

  • Transcriptomic features of Pecten maximus oocyte quality and maturation https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5333834/

  • Growth – Differential gene expression identified by RNA-Seq and qPCR in two sizes of pearl oyster (Pinctada fucata) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378111914000523

  • Maternal patterns of inheritance alter transcript expression in eggs https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10084599/

  • Immune function – Priming European Sea Bass Female Broodstock Improves the Antimicrobial Immunity of Their Offspring https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9913748/#sec3-animals-13-00415

  • Immune – Primed for success: Oyster parents treated with poly(I:C) produce offspring with enhanced protection against Ostreid herpesvirus type I infection https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0161589016301754

  • Gene Expression and Phenotypic Assessment of Egg Quality across Developmental Stages of Atlantic Cod throughout the Spawning Season – https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11242223/#sec2-ijms-25-07488

  • Epigenetics – Epigenetic considerations in aquaculture https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5723431/