Crowdsourcing ConGen – Populations in Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium

Posted on By Andrew Thaler
Conservation, Science

This post is part of the Crowdsourcing ConGen project. Crowdsourcing is the process of opening up a resource to a community for input and contributions. Throughout the coming year I’ll be posting manageable pieces of this document for the audience of Southern Fried Science to read and review. Please visit the main post for an overview.

“I have never done anything useful. No discovery of mine has made, or is likely to make, directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least difference to the amenity of the world.” ~ Godfrey Harold Hardy

The simplest model for a population is one in which the frequencies of alleles and genotypes remains constant from generation to generation. Under this model, there are no outside forces influencing selection, there is no tendency for any allele or genotype to be favored over any other, diploid alleles will recombine randomly in accordance with Mendelian inheritance. A population that behaves this way is said to be in Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium. This almost never happens.

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WhySharksMatter’s first PCR!

Posted on By David Shiffman 10 Comments on WhySharksMatter’s first PCR!
Science

As promised, here are the results of my first ever PCR. Here is some background:

I am going to be running some population genetics on sandbar shark DNA with the intention of comparing subpopulations from South Carolina with those from Virginia.

I am in the very early stages- seeing which primers work for PCR. Four primers each were tested- called A, B, C and D- on three shark DNA samples and a negative control. Ignore the samples on the bottom, they are from another student’s project. The four samples in the upper right are my negative controls.

The PCR was run yesterday (my first PCR), and I ran the gel today (my first gel).

It seems to me that Primer A is successfully copying my DNA during PCR, while B, C, and D are not.

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Supply Side Conservation Redux

Posted on By Andrew Thaler 4 Comments on Supply Side Conservation Redux
Conservation

can fisheries be saved?

The following was posted at the old website on January 5, 2010. It is reposted here as a response to the question “Why would you encourage people to consume any kind of seafood when bycatch is always an issue? Would it not be better simply to avoid any seafood whatsoever when we can live perfectly healthy lives without?” raised in Reader Mail: Aquariums, seafood, and my shark documentary. Old comments have be stripped but can be found at the original post here.

The Guilty Planet blog has a novel proposal for the New Year: Boycott Seafood. No, not just unsustainable seafood, not just environmentally destructive seafood, ALL seafood.

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Reader Mail: Aquariums, seafood, and my shark documentary

Posted on By David Shiffman 2 Comments on Reader Mail: Aquariums, seafood, and my shark documentary
Science

I am pleased to present the first in a new series of posts here at Southern Fried Science- reader mail. If a reader has a question for us, shoot us an e-mail with the subject “reader mail” and we may answer it for you on the blog. Our first questions are about my new shark conservation documentary:

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