Happenings in the lab…

 

Summer 2019 Asha Miles and I attended the International Society for Animal Genetics Conference in Lleida, Spain. Asha presented her research, Time- and population-dependent genetic patterns underlie bovine milk somatic cell count, and I presented research conducted by Dr. Stambuk, Genome-wide association studies of digital cushion thickness in Holstein cattle.  We also enjoyed site-seeing and dinner with colleagues along the way!

May 2019 Cassandra Stambuk, my first doctoral student, graduates with a PhD in Animal Science with minors in genetics and epidemiology.  Dr. Stambuk conducted her doctoral research on understanding Genotypic and Phenotypic Associations with Digital Cushion Thickness in Dairy Cattle.  She was also an integral team member supporting sampling for the mastitis and dog projects and a mentor for many of the undergraduates.   Dr. Stambuk will be moving to a post-doctoral position at Iowa State University exploring animal welfare.

Summer 2018 Eventful, chaotic, busy, overwhelming, dog filled, and travel filled, are just a few ways to describe the summer of 2018.  Our new research project, aka. the Vaika Project, aimed at studying aging in retired Alaskan sled dogs, was underway.  I lead this project with Co-PI, Dr. John Loftus and colleagues at Roswell Park Cancer Center.  It is research base for the Vaika Foundation which supports the project.  That meant, my team was tasked with the logistical nightmare of transporting over 100 sled dogs from kennels spanning the northern United States, Canada, and Alaska to Ithaca, NY in the heat of the summer!  Despite all odds, we did it!  Dogs flew passenger planes and cargo planes, piled into Ryder vans and 16ft moving trucks, and drove across country from Seattle to Ithaca in “Stanley” the infamous dog truck with buckets of ice to keep them cool.  However, it wasn’t smooth sailing once in Ithaca. Our kennels were still being remodeled and the team was tasked with teaching “old dogs, new tricks” like being social with dogs from different kennels and learning a new daily routine for feeding and outdoor playtime enrichment.  For more information on this project, see the Research page.

 

 

 

 

In addition to bringing home a lot of retired sled dogs to Ithaca, my team also continued sampling Alaskan sled dogs for my on-going research into the genetics of athletic performance.  Students, Karolynn Ellis and Sarah Gurnon, accompanied me, my two kids, and a longtime sled dog musher friend, Nancy Molburg, to Alaska to meet new Iditarod and sprint champions and collect data and DNA from their dogs.

 

 

 

 

 

This year’s Department of Animal Science Sustainable Agriculture Interns were Eme Chan and Christina Shupe.  They were vital team members for helping orient the new sled dogs to Cornell for the aging project and also spent time in the lab DNA sexing the various birds of prey for the Cornell Raptor Program.

 

 

 

Spring 2018 Karolynn Ellis, my first Undergraduate Hunter R. Rawlings Research Scholar in the lab presents her honors thesis research as she nears graduation.  Karolynn’s research focused on the impact of selection on the Siberian Husky breed with regards to their use as pet, sled, or show dogs.  Karolynn also helped sample for the mastitis and sled dog projects for many years. Photos: left- Poster presentation for Rawlings’ seniors; middle – socializing with a calf at one of the farms; right – measuring body size at a Siberian Husky sled kennel.

November 2017 The African Goat Improvement Network met in South Africa for it’s annual meeting.  Another productive meeting with international colleagues to preserve and improve goat production and small-holder farmer livelihood across Africa.  Along the way, we embarked on a safari at the Kruger National Park.

December 2016 End of the year celebration and dinner at my house!  Good company and good food.  Of course there were plenty of dogs to pet, nerf gun wars, and the occassional roller racer ride as well!

 

 

 

 

 

September 2016 – June 2017 Ms. Anahit Nazari Ghadikolaei, a PhD student from the University of Tehran, visited my lab to learn principles in genetic research and conduct analyses of body size, mohair quality, and population structure in the indigenous Iranian Markhov goat breed.  She was a tremendous asset to the team, helping with both cattle and dog projects as well.

Fall 2016 With a research award from the President’s Council of Cornell Women for studying performance in Alaskan sled dogs, me, my daughter, and 3 of the students were heading across the country for a whirlwind sampling trip.  Alex Valenti, Tyler Olsen, and Karolynn Ellis helped sample over 100 Alaskan sled dogs from competitive distance and sprint kennels across Alaska, New York, and Michigan. The students met many world champion sprint racers and Iditarod and Yukon Quest winners.  We covered a lot of miles on land and in the air and have many entertaining stories from our time together.  We put in many long days of drawing blood samples, measuring dogs’ body structure, and collecting pedigrees and performance data for the owners. The work didn’t stop as we returned to our hotel rooms and sorted samples into boxes and entered data into the computer.  Granted, a few perks came with all of the hard work… such as puppy socialization, awesome food, good people, and spectacular scenery. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

July 2016 Lots of events happened in July this year! The first is Chris Posbergh & John Nystrom traveled to the United Kingdom to sample sheep for the out of season lambing work. While there they sampled from several breeders in the Centurion Dorset Producer group. This group is hoping to incorporate genomics to select for ewes that lamb consistently in September/October. Asha Miles finished milk sampling for the mastitis trial. This ended the early 3AM samplings and long days collecting milk samples that many of our lab members had to endure. Now on to genotyping and analysis! There was also the ISAG conference in Salt Lake City, UT that both Heather & Chris attended. It was a great meeting to catch up with old friends, meet new ones, and build new collaborations. Both presented talks and posters that were well received. Heather’s talk on sled dogs was well received and had a large attendance from non-companion animal geneticists!

Also we are attempting a crowd-funding project to investigate brown coat color in sheep! You can learn more and donate at this link: https://experiment.com/moorit-sheep

January 2016 Alex Valenti attends the Plant and Animal Genomics Conference in San Diego, CA to present his honors thesis research on signatures of selection in Alaskan sled dogs.

August 2015  Fall semester has started and the summer has gone by way too fast.  Chris Posbergh, a previous undergraduate researcher has chosen to pursue his PhD in the lab studying sheep genetics.  In addition, Asha Miles, from UC Davis has also joined the lab to earn her PhD rounding out the graduate students in the lab.  Tyler Olson earned a project in the lab after a summer of volunteering and demonstrating his expertise in handling both dogs and cows.  Lastly, John Nystrom has joined the lab to pick up on the African goat project after Mary Beth graduated last May.  It’s a busy semester already!

Pennsylvania Sled Dog Club Summer Campout July/Aug 2015  After months of sampling cows, a group of us attended the PSDC summer sled dog campout in Morris, PA.  Yes, that means we went camping with sled dogs!  Alex, Tyler, Karolynn, Mary Beth, and Cassandra took on the adventure and survived a weekend of myself, my kids, 1 small dog (definitely not a sled dog) and lots of sled dog enthusiasts and their canine teams.  Barking dogs at almost any hour, fun sled dog racing demos in the morning, measuring and DNA collection in the afternoon, a brief cool down in the river, dinner with the sled dog mushers in the evening, and finally the campfire.

       

Summer 2015 Visiting Student Amanda Silva, from the Federal Rural University of Pernambuco, Brazil, spent the summer with the lab learning laboratory techniques and sampling cows.  As a Veterinary student in Brazil, she had spent the past the past year at the University of Wisconsin River Falls studying abroad and completed her exchange program with her summer research work in our lab.

Ireland Summer 2015 The mastitis project got underway  with Avril going home to Ireland and Karolynn following shortly afterwards to assist in sampling Irish Holsteins. Karolynn enjoyed her first real exposure to dairy cattle and farming life as she lived with Avril’s family and assisted not only in sampling on farms for the project but also helped with the family farm.  It was a marathon of driving and sampling across southern Ireland.  Avril was an excellent instructor and is continuing the project with nearly a 100 Irish Holstein.  Karolynn came back to Ithaca a sampling pro and continued working in the lab and sampling local cows throughout the summer.

May 2015 It’s the end of the semester with classes and student research wrapping up.  We had a joint picnic at Ithaca’s Robert Treman State Park including teaching assistants, lab members, friends, and family.  Those of us “brave” enough to partake in the hiking enjoyed great views of the water falls and conquered the marathon of stairs.  The best quote was from Alex “… and the email said light hiking…”.  It was a welcome view of many of my students resting on the wall by the water fall overlook as I finally made it up the last of the stairs!

While waiting for food, students entertained my two young kids with a game of freeze tag.  I will admit that it was the most entertaining and extremely competitive game of freeze tag I have ever witnessed.  Luckily the college students slowed their pace a bit for my 4 and 6 year old to catch them occasionally.  Eventually we all enjoyed a lot of BBQ and fruit cake!

 

Seneca Siberian Husky Specialty Show May 2015 Batavia, NY was our destination to measure and sample dogs for the day in support of Emily’s project comparing genetic signatures of Siberian Huskies used for different purposes.  Emily, Chris, Cassandra, Lauren, Ann, and myself take body measurements and DNA samples throughout the day.  It’s rough work sampling puppies but somebody has to do it!

 

January 16, 2015 Happy New Year!  It’s been quite busy lately and there are many changes occurring.  Mary Beth Hannon has spent the past few weeks in South Africa with our collaborators at the Agricultural Research Council sampling goats and working in the lab.  More to come on her adventures in the coming weeks.  Many of us are just returning from the Plant & Animal Genome Conference in San Diego, CA.  A balmy 70’F to Ithaca’s 5’F!  Overall, the conference was busy with presentations and collaborator meetings.  New ideas for new research starting soon!  In addition, the spring semester will be starting in less than a week and I’ll be teaching both ANSC 2210 and 3310.  We also have a new Post-doctoral Research Associate, Ann Staiger, and 2 new undergraduate students starting in the lab, Emily Plante and Karolynn Ellis.  Check out their info on the “Lab Members” page.

August 25, 2014 New graduate student, Cassandra Stambuk, joins the lab from Auburn University.  She’ll be working on dairy cattle genetics for her M.S./ Ph.D.

 

 

 

August 17-23, 2014  Senior Undergraduate student, Chris Posbergh, and myself attended the World Congress on Genetics Applied to Livestock Production in Vancouver, Canada.  We had a full week of seminars covering livestock species across the globe with research focusing on breeding value predictions, new and improved methodologies, and genetic investigations on production, adaptation, and health traits.  It was great to connect with old friends and put real faces to the names (email addresses) of more recent collaborators.  New connections were made as well with lots of discussion of current and future projects and ideas.  Overall it was a very international conference with respect to the people, the research, and even the food (Italian, Sushi, Brazilian Steak House…)!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

July 18, 2014

Dr. Farai Muchadeyi and graduate student Khanyisile Mdladla visit our lab from the Agricultural Research Council – Biotechnology Platform in South Africa. Visiting for 2 weeks, we work on analyzing genomic data from South African goat populations.