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	<em><img alt="" src="{filedir_5}Collin-Whitsett-headshot.jpg" style="height: 100px; width: 92px; float: left; " />Collin Whitsett is a senior Biology Major at Southern Nazarene University. &nbsp;Last year, he took our new course &#39;Molecular Tools for Field Biology&#39; at the Great Lakes Campus, which provided the foundation for his research this summer on genetic diversity in Pitcher&#39;s Thistle. &nbsp;Having already taken seven Au Sable courses during this college career, Collin has already achieved &#39;Au Sable Groupie&#39; status. &nbsp;</em></p>
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	<img alt="" src="{filedir_5}Pitchers_Thistle.jpg" style="width: 200px; height: 300px; float: right; " /><span style="font-size: 12px; ">My research this summer involves mapping genetic diversity within and amongst populations of Pitcher&#39;s thistle (<em>Cirsium pitcheri</em>), a threatened plant species that resides exclusively in Great Lakes dune ecosystems. For this summer, I&#39;m examining four populations and 20 individuals within each population. While more sites will eventually be needed for greater inference power, the hope is that the data could shed light on historical distributional patterns for the species and other facets of its natural history.&nbsp;</span>Let me use an example to illustrate this. Suppose one of my northern population sites for the species produces more seeds than it has the carrying capacity (i.e. space, resources, etc.) to support and that much of the extra seed blows into Lake Michigan and is carried south by shoreline currents. Suppose then that the seeds come to rest at my southern population site for the species, which isn&#39;t able to produce enough seed to support its long term existence on its own, but, subsidized by seed from the first site that gets carried there by the lake currents, it can persist healthfully. Molecular genetic data can identify such connections between sites because plants at both sites would show a higher degree relatedness (i.e. similar genetic structure) to one another. Knowing such a relationship between two sites could improve management of the species. For a conservation organization with limited funds, for example, it would be more advantageous to protect the first site (the one that produces more seed than it can support on its own) rather than the second site because if the first site suffered, the second would likely suffer with it thanks to having lost part of its own seed supply.</div>
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	<span style="font-size: 12px; "><img alt="" src="{filedir_5}Collin-in-lab.jpg" style="width: 200px; height: 196px; float: left; " />Now that I&#39;ve explained one of the benefits that molecular research can have, let me tell you how I&#39;m doing it. First, a quick background on DNA is necessary: within DNA, there are genes--molecular directions that determine how an organism gets built. But there are also large portions of DNA that, as far as scientists know, don&#39;t code for anything. When a mutation occurs in a coding part of DNA (i.e. a gene), the individual will be somehow affected by it. When a mutation occurs in a noncoding region of DNA, nothing at all happens to the individual. I&#39;m examining locations in Pitcher&#39;s thistle&#39;s DNA that don&#39;t code for traits in the plants. The advantage of using non-coding DNA is that it&#39;s a more neutral means of examination for genetic diversity. Since all changes in this area don&#39;t affect the plant, there&#39;s no chance that a change could occur and then be selected back out of the plant because it yields a less optimal physical expression. In other words, whereas selection can delete changes that occur in coding regions, there is no likelihood of that occurring in noncoding regions since changes don&#39;t actually affect any physical traits in the plant. Thus, more variation tends to accumulate in noncoding regions, which makes my job easier.&nbsp;</span></div>
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	<span style="font-size: 12px; "><img alt="" src="{filedir_5}DNA-analysis.jpg" style="width: 150px; height: 188px; float: right; " /></span></div>
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	<span style="font-size: 12px; ">So far, I&#39;ve extracted DNA from all my tissue samples (80 of them). Basically, this process involves smashing a small fragment of leaf tissue to a pulp and then treating it with a few different chemicals and filters to dissolve other molecules from the pulp and sift out all the non-DNA matter. Coming up, I will use a portion of each DNA sample I now have and isolate four different non-coding locations within the plant&#39;s genome. Once these regions are isolated, I can use a process called polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to amplify (i.e. make more copies) of the isolated strands. From there, each sample will then be examined on a genetic analyzer--a machine smaller than a dishwasher that costs $150,000 --, and this machine can tell me exactly how long each fragment of DNA is that I&#39;m examining. The length of each fragment is the genetic information I&#39;m ultimately after. I will then use the data I compile on each plant and compare the genetic variation I observe within and between populations.</span></div>
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	<span style="font-size: 12px; ">Ok, I believe I&#39;ve written enough to overload just about anyone, but I hope you find this as fascinating as I find it!</span></div>
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	<a href="/news_and_resources/blog/alex_de_sosa_wetlands_research">Read about Alex de Sosa&#39;s research</a> to determine a &#39;representative&#39; wetland plant community as a guide for homeowners dealing with invasive species and how this work has taught academic and spiritual lessons.</div>
