Profile
Michelle Grey
Candidate CV questions (extra)
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Education
Tulare Western High School, Tulare, California- studied core subjects and focussed on science and maths
BYU Idaho, Rexburg, Idaho- studied cellular biology, environmental geology and health science
Highline Community College, Des Moines, Washington- studied chemistry, drawing, anthropology (human behaviour) and maths
Warnborough College online distance learning- studied botany, plant and animal biochemistry, ecology, plant pathology, and marine science
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Qualifications
BSc Environmental Science (Hons) 1st 2016- this, along with the years of work experience I have built up, has helped to me work on the Norwich Research Park (and more importantly here at the Earlham Institute as a research assistant).
Introduction to Python for biologists- as it states, this course introduced me to the common coding using Python, which biologists get the most use out of. I learned how to take large sets of data and analyse them. This is helpful in that I could set a program going (which could take hours or days even) and get on with other tasks. I could be looking for certain genes in the genomes of several different samples and by hand this would take ages. With coding you can set it to look for specific gene sequences, compare it to the genomes of interest and file the outcome with one string of code. I’ve also taken away the visual display codes used for presenting data (I showed a couple of box plots above I was able to code for).
Bioinformatics for Beginners- A course I took during lockdown which was useful in teaching me the functions commonly used in bioinformatics. The above courses including this one have really helped me as a laboratory scientist in that I understand what will happen to the data I generate in the lab, once it is handed over to our bioinformaticians. I can also explain to them (the bioinformatician) what I’ve done to generate that data and why it may look a certain way, in a language they understand. I feel it is very important as a laboratory technician to be well-rounded and to know more than just lab techniques but to push your limits and learn more of what takes place downstream in the process.
Electron microscopy (TEM and SEM)- I’ve been a user of light microscopy from an early age but this was a whole different game and makes presenting and publishing papers all the more interesting. I was able to get a TEM of rust spores breaking out of a sugar beet leaf. It really was the coolest thing I’ve ever taken an image of! I hope I will be able to use more of what I learned over the course of my future projects.
Advanced microscopy techniques and Principles of Light Microscopy and camera technology- these courses allowed for me to understand the different mediums used with viewing tissues and materials on light microscopes. How thick the cover plates and slides are, dyes used to pinpoint certain features and how to handle thick plant material was all helpful. I was able to successfully image fungal tissues after learning what I did on this course. There were parts of the microscope I hadn’t even realised were there to manipulate.
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Work History
- Babysitter- from the age of 12-15 I babysat to earn pocket money
- Snow-shack- A summertime job I had at the age of 14. I made shaved ice and sold it out of a little shed which as sat in the middle of a car-park.
- Laboratory assistant- 1985-1988 JG Boswell Co. This was an agricultural company and I learned how to prepare soil, water and plant samples for gas chromatography analysis. I particle sized the farm soils. I also tested for how much extractant was left in safflower and cottonseed oil.
- TacoBell- 1987-1988. Worked part-time during school to pay for my car expenses.
- Macheezmo Mouse- June 1988- Sept. 1988 Worked here during the summer after moving up to Seattle, Washington. I cooked chicken breasts and prepared the fresh salsa.
- Qiagen Genomics- Oct. 2001- March 2003. Production associate II. I carried out mapping of DNA, PCR I and II (pre and post) and helped out in the microbiology and sequencing labs when they needed my help. I extracted DNA from mammalian cells and cultures. It was here I got to assist on a part of the human genome project.
- Laboratory Assistant- July 2009 – Aug. 2010 Gardline Environmental Ltd. I was in charge of the particle-size analysis of seabed samples brought in for environmental assessments. I also assisted with taxonomic ID of benthic macro and microfauna.
- Laboratory supervisor- Sept. 2010- June 2018 Gardline Environmental Ltd. I implemented plans to increase productivity in the PSA lab. We now offered PSA to international and national standards (BS1377 and ISO) . These implementations doubled the number of samples to process so now I had to train our field scientists (when not offshore) to carry out the methods to these standards so they could assist on the larger jobs which came in.
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Current Job
- Research Assistant- Jun 2018-to present, Department of Organisms and Ecosystems in the Neil Hall Lab at Earlham Institute. Designed and established the laboratory space we used. Set in motion SOPs for the institute and wrote up several for our laboratory protocols as well as for field work. DNA and RNA extractions- transcription and annotation. PCR and primer design. Quality control for DNA and RNA using NanoDrop, QuBit, TapeStation and Bioanalysers. Culturing in liquid media and solid media. Media prep and technical skills including use of freeze-drier, electrophoresis, PCR, microscopy. Liaise with collaborators in and outside UK. Supervise and tran students including Nuffield BSc students in industry, MSc and PhD. Participate in public outreach programs. Bioinformatics using python and including use of BLAST, MEGA and T-BAS
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Employer
Earlham Institute
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About Me:
Hi! I’m an environmental scientist who loves both lab and field-work. I love nature, art (including music) and my family.
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Read more
I’ve was born in Exeter, California and had a keen desire to learn science from a young age. When I was 8 years old my grandfather gave me his microscope which was very old, but still worked. It needed an external light source and had lenses which you fitted into the base of the eyepiece. I used to collect pond water from the neighbourhood pond (just at the end of the street I lived on) and search for amoebas and paramecium and whatever else I had been learning about in my science class. During high school I was given a chemistry set for Christmas which I enjoyed for a while. I thought I might like to major in chemistry but I really enjoyed biology as well. After high school I studied biochemistry when first attending university. This major was changed to environmental science later on.
I am married to my best friend and have three adult children and one grandchild. Our two eldest live here in the UK with us while our youngest is living in Idaho, USA with her husband and baby girl. We also have three cats and they keep us smiling daily.
I enjoy hiking up mountains and did so on a regular basis when I lived in California and Washington State. Yosemite and Mt. Rainier were some of my favourite areas to hike in back home. I’ve since hiked up Sca Fell Pike here in England, Snowdonia in Wales, Ben Nevis in Scotland and we roamed around the Pyrenees in the South of France a couple of summers in a row.
I like to surf but I’m rubbish at it. Swimming is my sport of choice with tennis coming in second. I played the clarinet in the marching band for four years while in my youth and took up oil painting when I was 15, which I still enjoy today. When I was 16, my friends and I made it onto a tv show called ‘Puttin on the Hits’ which was a lip-syncing game show aired nationally. We didn’t win but got to stay a week in Hollywood and go onto the Universal Studios filming set which was pretty cool.
I love cheesy jokes and puns and make most of my friends (and family) roll their eyes when I share any with them.
Thanks for reading about me and I hope I can answer some questions regarding DNA that you might have!
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My Work:
As research assistant within the Neil Hall group here in the department of Organisms and Ecosystems, I am assisting with projects relating to plant pathogens which infect our wheat and sugar beet crops, as well as assisting with nucleic purification in the DToL protist project. I spend most of my time working out the best method to extract DNA from plants, fungi and now protists!
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Read more
In my early 20’s I moved from California up to Seattle, Washington where I was able to start my career in microbiology while working at Qiagen Genomics. While at Qiagen I was lucky enough to assist with part of the human genome project. We were genotyping eye shapes and eye colour using our PCR method accompanied by the mass spectrometer.
Jump ahead to 2009 and I started working for an offshore environmental survey company based in Great Yarmouth. It was while working for this company I continued to pursue my degree but changed my major to environmental science with the focus on biochemistry of plants and animals. I successfully completed my degree with honours and wound up working for Gardline Environmental for nearly 9 years in total!
In 2018 I was led to the research assistant position at the Earlham Institute and have been here since that time. I’ve been working with Dr. Mark McMullan on agricultural and wild fungal pathogens. During this time I have been able to train in Denmark with collaborators. This is involving a biotroph fungal pathogen, Uromyces beticola, which attacks Sugar Beets and their closest wild relative, the Sea beet. (https://www.earlham.ac.uk/sugar-sea-beet). I’ve assisted on writing a publication on this project and that can be found here: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.12.456076v1
I’ve also been collaborating with researchers at Rothamsted Research in Harpenden, England, where I have grown, in culture, over 80 species of fungi from grass roots which were collected from the longest running science experiments in the world. Look it up here: http://www.era.rothamsted.ac.uk/Broadbalk.I’ve been honing my skills in the lab over the past 2 years extracting genomic DNA and RNA from these fungal cultures. Recently, I’ve successfully extracted genomic DNA for long-read sequencing as well as the accompanying RNA for annotation of those genomes. For more info on this particular project please look here: https://www.earlham.ac.uk/articles/what-makes-plant-killer
Working in Neil Hall’s lab team I have also been involved in DNA transcription of dengue virus RNA and am now assisting Dr. Sally Warring (https://www.earlham.ac.uk/articles/weird-and-wonderful-world-protists-interview-sally-warring) while she is on maternity leave…this is how I came to work on the Darwin Tree of Life protist project.
I’ve learned that every species has its own set of challenges when it comes to nucleic acid purification. What works for one species might not work for another. With fungi as well as protists, there is no ‘one-size fits all’ extraction method.
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I'm currently solving this problem:
At the moment I am waiting for sequencing results back from our genomics pipeline group which is located on the ground floor of the Earlham Institute. They have 22 of our fungal genomic DNA samples. Due to the pandemic, some laboratory supplies have been either in short supply, or just not available so this slows down the laboratory work a lot. When a DNA sample is sent into the pipeline, it has a quality check performed to ensure there is enough DNA present and that this DNA is intact without impurities which could inhibit the sequencing. If it checks out okay, then it is prepped and they call this a library prep. There are kits which are used for each piece of equipment and in this instance of long-read sequencing, they will use the PacBio instrument. The library prep involves size-selection of the DNA (by basepairs) and then buffers are added which keep the DNA intact during the sequencing. I have been working on extracting long-read or genomic DNA for 22 fungal samples. More than half of these are from what I grew up when working out at Rothamsted Research. The other half come from the soil cores which were taken directly under the roots from which I cultured these fungal tissues. The most difficult part of extracting DNA from fungal tissues is the amount of polysaccharides and RNases within the fungal cells. These inhibit sequencing so need to be cleaned out before your sample is submitted. Another difficulty is how to break open fungal cells due to chitin. Chitin is a flexible fibre and is five times stronger by weight than high-grade steel and extremely stretchy so to use enough force to lyse the cells (break them open), you are at risk of damaging or ‘shearing’ the DNA as well as releasing all the contaminants you don’t want included with your DNA (polysaccharides, RNases, melanin). I worked hard and long on trialling different extraction methods. I made minor changes and tweaks along the way and at the end was successful at obtaining some long strands of DNA from these samples due to the help of scientists out at Rothamsted, Research. We shared back and forth what each was doing to overcome the issues we were having with the DNA and finally it was solved, at least for these samples!
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I'm currently working on these species doing this:
The species I am working on within the Darwin Tree of Life project are coming from local ponds as well as ponds and lakes out near Oxford at the moment.
They are:
Tetramitus jugosis – amoeba
Hydrodictyon reticulatum – green alga
Chrysotila carterae – coccolith
Rhodella violacea – red alga
Diacronema lutheri – microalga
Tetraselrius chui – uniceluular agla
Chloroidium saccharophilum – a common terrestrial coccoid green alga
Pycnococcus provasolii – green alga
Dunaliella primolecta – biflagellate green algal and mostly marine protist
Colpoda steinii – colpoda-shaped ciliate
Thalassiosira rotula – planktonic diatom
Pseudo-nitzschia pungens – planktomic diatom
Chlamydomonas spp. – green algae
I’m involved with a group of scientists that are figuring out the best method(s) for extracting long-read DNA from each of these species. The outcome for each will provide blueprints for how to extract from other similar species for the Darwin Tree of Life project. So far the diatoms and other marine-based species in the above list are proving the most difficult and challenging to work with. Some of the green algae are presenting similar issues I’ve had in the lab with fungi and plant material due to the excess sugars these cells carry.
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Photos of my equipment:
G.tritici
Diversity amongst the fungal cultures
Sugar beet rust spores
analyses of RNA extractions. The RIN is the RNA integrity number. We need RIN 8 or above for RNA sequencing to be successful.
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My Interview
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How has your work progressed recently?
Quite well actually. I have submitted our samples for sequencing which will hopefully produce 22 full genomes to answer specific questions regarding the wheat pathogen G.tritici as well as the take-all antagonist species
What have you got planned for your research over the next year?
I'm assisting with the protist extractions and will be trialling some changes to the existing method in order to improve yields and DNA quality
How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
passion driven microbiologist
What or who inspired you to follow your career?
My family encouraged me to follow what I love to do and I have always had a passion for our natural world and what makes everything work the way it does at a molecular level.
What was your favourite subject at school?
Biology, closely followed by chemistry
What did you want to be after you left school?
A biochemist studying plants (phytochemistry)
Were you ever in trouble at school?
Once I skipped my afternoon class to hangout with friends. Got caught and never did that again.
If you weren't doing this job, what would you choose instead?
I'd choose working as a field scientist assessing habitats
Who is your favourite singer or band?
Weezer
What's your favourite food?
Tamales (Mexican food!!)
What is the most fun thing you've done?
Stealthily visited my home state without telling anyone I know there so my husband and I could just play in the mountains, at the coast and go to Disneyland. It was so much fun!
If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
I'd like to earn a PhD through publication before I retire, I'd like to own a couple of acres of woodland and live next to it and I would love to have a sea and river worthy boat to travel in.
Tell us a joke.
What do you call a fungi that makes music? De-composer
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