GenBank Accession Numbers For Mummichog DNA

Kris has finished the submission of our F. heteroclitus cyt-b DNA sequences to the on-line repository GenBank. The accession numbers are GQ202727-GQ202741, with the last one, 741, being the sequence for an individual F. similis from the Florida Keys that we use as an outgroup in our phylogenetic analysis. These sequences are ~760 bases long, starting at around position 400 in the 1140 base pair gene and mostly running up to the 3' end of the gene. They'll be available online July 1 to give Kris a chance to write his thesis and get it out at (hopefully) the same time the sequences become public. I guess that posting these online is even a small "publication" of sorts, since my name and Kris' are listed as "authors". We hope to publish a short article with our analysis of these sequences (with a few others found on-line) probably in the journal Northeastern Naturalist.

I had an unusual experience this morning. I dropped my truck off at a local Toyota dealership to fix a blown shock in the right front corner dating back to being stuck in that wall of mud in Tallapoosa County last year. It's really only long walking distance from there to my office, but I decided to wait for the shuttle because of a rain threat. While driving around dropping off others, I chatted with the driver who didn't seem to be the typical shuttle driver. He asked me about the appointment of the former head of NASA to a cushy job here at the university, which seemed to amuse him; "I used to be in academia". By the time he dropped me off I began to realize who he was -- it was Douglas Prasher, who should have shared in the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology last year. He did key work in isolating the green fluorescent protein gene (GFP) from a jellyfish back in the 1990's while at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Cape Cod. This gene has become a key workhorse for molecular biology as something that can be cut into many organisms' genomes and used as a marker for the expression of other genes. Only three people can share in a Nobel, and Prasher wound up as a fourth contender, but odd man out. Prasher came to Huntsville to work at NASA, but lost his job several years ago when NASA unceremoniously disbanded their local biology research. He became "famous" for not being able to find other work as a Ph.D. biologist, driving shuttle buses for local companies to scratch out a living. So I have to go back later today to pick up my truck, and I think I'll take the shuttle just to introduce myself to Prasher now that I remember his name(!).