OMG! After 4 years, Friday was my last day working on @OMGenomes at @ourANU. I’ve been lucky to do some amazing mammaly museumy geneticy things, hang out with great people, travel to interesting places, & look after very special samples. Here’s a thread of OMG highlights

Working on @OMGenomes has been a quollity experience

I may have handled tissue samples from every* bandicoot specimen in the world - thanks @TravouillonK!
* ok maybe not but that’s what it felt like sometimes

Sadly I was unable to steal this 3D print of a thylacine pup from Mark Eldridge and @DrRebeccaJ

But OMG did pass the pub test, with an earnest discussion about skulls and teeth and tissue samples

I was super privileged to visit Jyväskylä and speak about OMG at the European Congress of Conservation Biology - and perfectly timed to see the Manic Street Preachers headline a music festival next door to the venue!

It was fantastic to meet all of these wonderful scientists who took part in the conference’s conservation genomics symposium @gsegelbacher @MikeBruford @EmzLCarroll @FishConGen @IndianaDiez @Zwickynova

Childhood dream fulfilled - I was very excited to step behind the scenes at @NHM_London to sample historical marsupial specimens for @OMGenomes - early days yet for data analysis but think they will prove exciting!

I was very excited to see this mounted lesser bilby specimen at @NHM_London - you don’t come across one of those every day - but it is also pretty devastating to hold the remains of an extinct species - good motivation to contribute to ongoing marsupial conservation!

Huge thanks to @bertieportela for taking the time to show me around the @NHM_London mammal collection and trusting me with those precious specimens!

Last year, (really only last year?!?) before face masks were quite so prevalent, I worked in @NHM_London’s ancient DNA lab to extract DNA from those marsupial specimens, as school kids waved and pointed at us through the windows. Huge thanks to @SelBrace for making this possible!

Back when travel and socialising were a little easier, with @KathyBelov and @j9deakin, talking marsupials at a @GeneticsAus conference dinner

Hosting @TravouillonK on a visit to @EcoEvo_ANU - he was worried I was running out of bandicoot samples to sequence so he brought some more

That time I visited CSIRO’s Australian National Wildlife Collection to sample some marsupial skins, and bumped into @khelgen @lhelgen who were looking at tree kangaroo skulls

Posing with some exon capture libraries and a pipette in the @ANUbiomolecular lab like I’m really in the middle of doing lab work ( credit @SimonCTT)

I also visited several Australian museums to collect samples. I met this thylacine behind the scenes at Museum Victoria - another extinct species. Again, heartbreaking. Let’s do a better job of conserving the surviving Aussie mammals!

Got to watch @TravouillonK at work doing some skull imaging wizardry

Here’s Craig Moritz giving a conference talk about @OMGenomes

And here’s the Moritz lab group annual retreat at the Kioloa field station

Sometimes I even got to work with live mammals! Thanks to @zoologistjones et al for letting me help with bandicoot and wallaby monitoring. Here I’m releasing a bandicoot after we gave it a health check.

Bandicute!

One of the best aspects of @OMGenomes has been the opportunities to brainstorm conservation genetics and management ideas with experts all over the world, including these top people @CEGrueber @HelenTaylorCG. Shame we could not get @persoonia in person for this pic too!

OMG science in the pub, with @j9deakin talking about Tasmanian devil chromosomes

And more OMG science in the pub, with me leading a mammal conservation pub quiz

2020 has been a mess for so many reasons... including huge disruptions to OMG lab research. In Canberra, 2020 started with awful bushfires all around, and smoke affecting air quality, causing ANU campus to close. I took this pic of the Orroral fire from @EcoEvo_ANU seminar room.

Also in Jan 2020, more disruptions at ANU caused by damage from a hailstorm that passed right over campus (hail broke glasshouses, fume hood exhausts and other research infrastructure, and damaged hundreds of cars on campus) and also over my house (hello insurance company...)

Just a few weeks later we were working from home thanks to COVID... & most collaborators were in lock down too... but then by August, back in the lab & samples started turning up again, including this monster marsupial tissue and DNA hamper from Mark Eldridge and @GretaFrankham

I’ve been sent thousands of samples for OMG, & seen the many ways they are packaged for transport. This is possibly my favourite, with tubes carefully sealed in pairs, IN NUMBER ORDER! inside more protective layers of packaging. Love your work Steve Cooper & Sally South at ABTC!

So for the last few months I have been extracting DNA from previous samples like these lesser bilby tissues...

...which were part of this final batch of marsupial skin DNA extractions I did in the @EBL_ANU Trace DNA Lab...

...quantitative and checking that DNA, which has often been very degraded and poor quality or quantity...

... and finally all the fun of sequencing library preparation and setting up hybridisations for exon capture... a whole year of lab work condensed into 3 months!

...plus admin and project management... but very satisfying to see my OMG whiteboard suddenly getting populated with lots of green ticks

Hurray for coffee breaks (and occasional doughnuts!) at the Little Pickle

And hurray for sanity-preserving walks along Sullivan’s Creek - fresh air and wildlife, perfect way to recharge the batteries at lunchtime

I’m now done with @OMGenomes lab work! So long and thanks for all the bandicoots! Now we just need to analyse those mountains of data and write those papers

To close this thread, hundreds of people have contributed to OMG projects or helped me out in other ways over the last 4 years, with samples, logistics, ideas, wise words, mentoring & support. Can’t tag you all but you know who you are - a massive thanks to all of you!

*quantitating