Project:

The Use of DNA Barcoding for validation of species of local ants collected at West Babylon Senior High School, Long Island NY

Students:

Jennise Gomez, Amelia Berkey, Lauren Giudice

School:

West Babylon Senior High School, Suffolk

Mentors:

Andrea Durbin

Abstract:

The goal of this project is to find out the different types of ants in our school courtyard. The location of these species is in the West Babylon Senior Highschool Courtyard. The ants were collected by hand and some by placing a cookie trap down. The motivation for this project is to discover the many different types of ants. The methods used to accomplish this goal is to first take pictures of the ants, then extract the ant’s DNA, clean the DNA, manage PCR on a certain type of gene that will aid in copying the mitochondrial gene, then get gel electrophoresis to see if you got DNA, transfer the samples to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory to be sequenced and lastly utilize BLAST and DNA Subway to check if we can find a match and distinguish the species. We expect to find different species of ants.

Poster:

Team samples:

See all samples for project