eDNA Senior Design Updates

About the eDNA Senior Design Project

We are a group of students in the Ecological Engineering Senior Design (BEE 469 and 470) class. We are working on evaluating the performance of the OPEnS Lab eDNA Sampler (PolyWAG) for our senior design project. This evaluation will take place over the fall 2019 and winter 2020 terms and will include the following components:

• Cross-contamination testing: quantitatively with DNA and qualitatively with rhodamine WT dye

We also developed protocols for the following components that we no longer plan to test:

• DNA preservation testing
• Field testing

Our senior design team members are Lillian Peters, Jessica Chaplen, Kathleen Larson, and Jordan Laundry.

This page will be updated biweekly with links to memos detailing our progress.

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Final report: This report includes the results of our testing and evaluations. It also includes our proposed protocols for future tests.

Project Log: Our project log is an organized version of the google drive we have been using for the past two terms. It includes a read me file with a table of contents for navigation.

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Biweekly Memo 10: This document contains results from our tests of a bleach cleaning method. It also contains a discussion of our uncertainties, the possible unintended consequences of using the device, and the next steps for continuing testing.

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Biweekly Memo 9: This document contains a summary of our latest client meeting, our bleach testing protocol, and the results of our economic analysis.

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Biweekly Memo 8: This document contains our results from our second round of DNA cross-contamination testing and qualitative dye analysis of contamination through the filter housings.

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Cross-contamination Results: This document, developed for our stakeholder meeting, contains a short overview of results from DNA cross-contamination testing.

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Biweekly Memo 7: This memo contains details about DNA cross-contamination testing and preliminary ethanol concentration testing.

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Biweekly Memo 6: This memo contains details about our plan for DNA cross-contamination testing and our plan for the rest of the term.

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Interim Technical Report: This report is a summary of all of our work from fall term.

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Biweekly Memo 5: This memo includes results from our second round of dry tests, a brief recap of our client meeting on Tuesday 12/3, and details about some of our concerns so far. It includes the known issues document that we presented at the client meeting.

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Biweekly Memo 4: This memo includes initial results from our cross-contamination testing as well as a preliminary draft of our field testing and DNA preservation protocols.

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Biweekly Memo 3: This memo includes our cross-contamination testing protocol, our dye concentration calculations, and an explanation of our preliminary decision matrix for field testing. We have also updated our timeline for cross-contamination testing.

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Individual reports (background research and analysis):

• A comparison of autosampler testing
• About fluorometers
• About PolyWAG's hardware
• An evaluation of PolyWAG's user interface

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Biweekly Memo 2: In this memo we give information on the background research we have done, we make minor changes to our timeline for cross-contamination testing, and we list a few questions we have for Dr. Udell and Dr. Levi.

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Biweekly Memo 1: In this memo we include our formal problem statement and plans for background research