 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Chair of Genetics, Animal Biotechnology and Immunology (where most of the balkan-trout team works) organized the second annual picnic. There was a lot of things to celebrate: the end of the school year, Tamara's PhD, Peter's birthday and good grades received by the entire research group.
More pictures available here.
Tamara Rozman successfully defended her PhD thesis "Characterization of transferrin locus and its application in phylogenetic analysis of genus Salmo", available here. Transferrin was the marker of choice because mitochondrial markers and microsatellites (frequently used nuclear markers) have several limitations when used in phylogenetic studies. A major problem was ancient tetraploidization of salmonid genome resulting in two actively transcribed transferrin loci.
Tamara was involved in this project for a long time, partially because of this and this reason, and also because the study was carried out on third generation of marble trout × brown trout hybrids (generation time 2-3 years).
Lake Krn is the largest Slovenian alpine lake (about 400×150 m). Several fish species were introduced in the last century causing dramatic changes of the ecosystem. The lake now suffers from eutrophication - increase of nutrients. It is not known from where, how many and when the minnow (Phoxinus phoxinus) was introduced. Sampling was organized to bring fin clips for genetic study to determin the origin of the minnow on the basis of mtDNA markers. Nuclear markers will be used later to assess diversity, inbreeding and effective population size.
More pictures from the expedition available here.
