Amber Taylor
Amber is a team member on the Florida Springs Biodiversity Project and is an undergraduate student in Dr. Rima Franklin’s lab at Virginia Commonwealth University. She is using genetic and molecular biology techniques in order to understand what type of bacteria are present within Florida’s underwater cave systems. North and central Florida Karst systems are her focus, and in addition to studying bacterial genetics, she analyzes water samples for a variety of components including ammonia, sulfide, alkalinity, iron, pH, dissolved oxygen content, temperature, etc. Her specialty is using molecular techniques in order to clone the bacteria’s DNA Sequence (16s gene). Bioinformatic techniques enable the team to analyze the genetic data derived from cloning. NCBI, Geneious, ClustalX and sequencer programs are the most common ones that are used in analyses.