Dr. David Campbell said it all...
   I am doing the DNA-extraction, PCR and sequencing of the wentletraps in a molecular laboratory which is shared by our museum, Leiden University and the Leiden Herbarium.
My PhD-study is funded by WOTRO, a Dutch organisation funding research of Dutch scientists in the tropics.

Kind regards,
Adriaan Gittenberger
PhD-student "Gastropod parasites and their coral hosts"
National Museum of Natural History Naturalis
P.O. Box 9517
2300 RA  Leiden
The Netherlands
Tel. +31.71.5687631
Fax +31.71.5687666
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
www.ascidians.com


>   So you're doing DNA sampling. Then you should know what that costs. What does it cost? How long does it take? Who does it? I was told previously that such sampling was too expensive just to find  gastropodal relationships. Please keep us Eponitists informed. Inquiring minds want to know.<

For DNA sequencing, the cost is about $50 per sequence at present for all the reagents involved.  Getting a sequence can take as little as a few days from specimen to final data if everything works and if you are focused on it full time.  The equipment is becoming more widely available, so any major university, biotech firm, etc. would have the equipment, and many smaller schools have it as well.  There are also places that will do some of the work for you, if you pay them.  However, it remains true that funding is the main factor preventing more extensive applicaiton of these techniques to mollusks.

    Dr. David Campbell
    Old Seashells
    University of Alabama
    Biodiversity & Systematics
    Dept. Biological Sciences
    Box 870345
    Tuscaloosa, AL  35487-0345 USA
    [log in to unmask]

That is Uncle Joe, taken in the masonic regalia of a Grand Exalted Periwinkle of the Mystic Order of Whelks-P.G. Wodehouse, Romance at Droitgate Spa

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