Cultivating the Biodeterioration Lab’s Fungal Culture Collection
Faculty mentor/Supervisor:
Jed Cappellazzi
Email Address:
Department Affiliation:
Wood Science & Engineering
Project Location:
Richardson Hall 283/284
Project Description:
The Biodeterioration Lab in the Wood Science and Engineering Department has been researching wood decay fungi for over 40 years. During that time, the number of fungal species we have acquired from herbaria or isolated from nature has grown significantly. Our fungal culture collection now contains ~300 unique species and is in need of a major update for the longer-term preservation of live cultures. Therefore, we are looking for a student to manage and update our culture collection while learning important mycological and genetic laboratory procedures.
Describe the type of work and tasks you anticipate the student will perform:
The student will learn and perform the following tasks.
1. Sterile microbiological technique
2. Isolation, culturing, and sub-culturing of fungal strains
3. Preserving fungal species for both medium and long-term storage
4. Making and sterilizing culture media
5. Microscopy
6. Fungal sporocarp gathering to increase the size and diversity of our culture collection
7. Organizing and updating our culture database
8. DNA extraction, amplification, cleaning, and sequencing
9. Bioinformatics
Hourly rate of pay:
14.00
Detail your mentorship plan:
A combination of myself and PhD students in our laboratory will train the student on all of the relevant laboratory procedures and work with them on fungal culture collection management. Eventually, the student will have all of the necessary skills to feel confident working in a microbiology laboratory.