Dr John Wood1, Sarah Spotten1
1Pisces Molecular LLC, Boulder, US
Biography:
John Wood is the founder and chief scientist of Pisces Molecular. In his career of more than 45 years, he has carried out research in the pharmaceutical industry and human biotechnology in areas including yeast cell division control, eukaryotic protein secretion, Alzheimer’s Disease and recombinant hemoglobin across the US and internationally. For the last 26 years his focus has been on the application of modern molecular genetic techniques, including NGS and CRISPR, to the areas of fisheries, wildlife and conservation. D. r Wood has a BS. In Biology from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in molecular genetics from the University of Washington.
Abstract:
A recent and rapidly growing area of research has been the combination of environmental DNA (eDNA) techniques and low-cost Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) to allow ecosystem level questions to be approached. However, the ability to collect vast amounts of species presence data with these techniques, especially at the microbiome level, has frequently outstripped the ability to draw inferences from the results. Here we present our efforts to extend upon differential heat tree visualizations to understand why a US waterbody negative for Dreissenid mussels across many years of testing has now become susceptible to Dreissenid colonization.