This week I have been mostly working on accessing Iceland soil in the ancient DNA lab. The soil was shipped back from Iceland after the trip in 2014. It currently lives in the ancient lab because eventually DNA will be extracted and specific mammalian DNA with specific markers (Horse and a few others) will be amplified. The goal will be to determine what animals were cultivated in the ancient human settlement formerly at the site where the samples were taken.

Today I will follow the sterile lab protocols to take out a very small sample of the soil and bring it to the analytical chem lab to be dried out in an oven, removing all living microbes. The remaining sample will still be usable for DNA extraction, and there will be more than enough left for multiple extractions.

Other than soil, I’m working on using openSCAD to design housing for the sensors that we will 3D print. My first priority is a housing for the TI Nano, followed by the field platform. The Nano needs a case so we can change its orientation 180 degrees and take soil spectra. I would like to get this working soon.

I am making progress on all of the sensor platforms. Kristin has been making a lot of progress on BLE so the sensors should be integrated with Field Day and ready for testing soon.