Sample information

The ant was found climbing on a tree, between the bark of the tree. The tree was medium size with layered brittle bark with a lot of gaps in between. It was collected during the morning sometime around 9 – 10 am. The weather was very sunny at the time and was a bit humid. I saw other ants as well climbing on other trees but the ants were fast and hard to catch. They would run and hide under the layered bark.

Methods

DNA extraction had a 260/280 ration of 1.914 which is just above the sweet spot for good DNA purity which is 1.7-1.9 (preferably right in between at 1.8), meaning DNA is relatively pure. Nucleic acid density was originally 240.843 ng/uL; we had to dilute down to 50 ng/uL before sending it off to sequence.

Results

In order to test if the sample was Wolbachia positive, a 30 cycle PCR was conducted using SYBR Safe and primers for Wolbachia. The PCR did not indicate a presence/glow for Wolbachia DNA for any of the samples tested. This however also meant that the arthropod sample that was supposed to be positive for Wolbachia that was used as a positive control was also showing no presense/glow for Wolbachia DNA, indicating that something likely went wrong with the process for testing for the Wolbachia specific DNA in the arthropod samples. My group believes that all the PCR steps conducted were generally correct and that that this anomaly was due to us forgetting to add primers into that tube specifically or something else specific to that tube. Do to this lack of confidence, we are unable to guarantee using evidence that Wolbachia was not present in all of our samples.