April Showers for Sure

Mussel Methylation
Lab Notebook
Published

April 2, 2026

Plan of the Week: March 30 - April 5, 2026

High- level outline for the week. Adjusted daily to reflect progress of the day before

  • I am finally as close to healthy as I have been in awhile, so as long as the anxiety of being so behind doesn’t take me out, I will be solid!

Monday - Catch up on UW-RUA and NWS Poster

Tuesday - UW-RUA, No Science

Wednesday - Biomarker Manuscript

Thursday - Biomarker Manuscript

Friday - NWS Symposium

Saturday - Biomarker Manuscript

Sunday - No Science

Plan of the Day

Granular level task list to accomplish the high- level goal outlined above

  • The plan today is to try and focus for short working blocks in between my obligations.

Projects Touched Today

  • DNA Methylation

Progress Notes

  • I started today handling personal business.
  • Next up was Connor’s MS defense where he demonstrated how morphology helped clarify some of the evolutionary relationships amongst diverse fishes using the skull shape of sticklebacks. It was very cool to see the culmination of a ton of hard work!
  • I pulled my log notes from Notion to update my lab notebook. Not too many things going on so far this week so that was quick.
  • I checked in on the methylation work and found that at some point prior to lunchtime my terminal disconnected. I got to repeat the erase/ rerun circle from yesterday.
    • Since I don’t trust the option to close the browser and continue the work, the humpback whale sanctuary in Hawaii has been running any time I have to leave my computer to ensure the final alignment runs and lets me move forward in the methylation analysis. As of 1738, sample 95M has been running since about 1345. Let’s hope it will wrap up before the morning.
    • It did finish and I was able to get the deduplication and MultiQC up and running by 1920, so that should be finished before morning.
  • I outlined/ brain dumped the methylation chapter sections into a Google doc while I watched the deduplications run for a bit, and called it a day.

Outcomes: Products & Word Count

  • Outlining Methylation Chapter: 553 words

Today’s total: 553 words

Monthly total to date: 553 words

Annual total to date: 33,225 words

Annual target total to date: 46,000 words

Next Up: Tomorrow’s Plan

  • Will be determined tomorrow.