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? 

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Marina and Stu demonstrating the posture of "a hungry hungry polyp"