Rebecca Varney, PhD
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    • Convergent Traits in Arthropods
    • Chitons: Iron teeth, many eyes
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  • Research
    • Convergent Traits in Arthropods
    • Chitons: Iron teeth, many eyes
  • News
  • Publications
  • Outreach
  • Teaching
  • Resources
  • About Me
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9/30/2021 0 Comments

Arthropod Brains into the future! Split-Seq single-cell sequencing awarded! (but also cockroaches)

The problem with studying small brains is that they are, in fact, small brains. If you've ever worked with brain tissues, you know that they are malleable, so small bits rarely hold their shape. We want to compare brain structures between hexapods (insects), stomatopods (mantis shrimps), and copepods and ostracods. Those last two? TINY BRAINS!

I just won a CORE-grant to sequencing single cell transcriptomes from 8 biological samples. I'll be generating data from all four groups to look at homologous and convergent structures at a cellular level. 

I also just looked up how to order a cockroach. I'm all for science being unpredictable, but this is just not what I thought my online shopping would look like today. Hmmm. 
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9/21/2021 0 Comments

When the wrong jellyfish are right...

The most important quality a scientist can possess is resilience. It is rare that a project ever runs from initiation to completion without a snag or a tweak (I don't think I've ever seen this happen, actually). And sometimes the snags turn out to be pretty awesome....

We've been growing jellyfish polyps for awhile, and when they metamorphosed to medusae we were ready to move ahead with a genome sequencing project. Until we found out that they were the the wrong jellyfish. Somehow our culture had been taken over by an imposter!

In a fun twist, the new species turned out to be one we are also interested in, because it represents another independent origin of eyes. So my amazing post-bac and two undergrads sat for HOURS and sorted out the polyps. 

Two for one jellyfish cultures. Perhaps two genomes to come? 

​
Picture
Marina and Stu demonstrating the posture of "a hungry hungry polyp" 
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9/15/2021 0 Comments

We get to work with a Post-BAC!

Right now I am ramping up work on an NSF-funded project to examine structures in the brains of different arthropods. Todd and I applied for a "REPS" scholar (Research Experience for Post-Baccalaureate Students) and today we got a notice of award! I'm really excited to get to work with this younger researcher to expand this project- two brains (or fifty, in the freezer) are better than one!
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