Zak Kulberg
Zak Kulberg
Bioscience Internship: Abate Lab, UCSF
Internship Mentor: Dr. Xiangpeng Li
Poster: Next Generation Sequencing (NGS): Molecular Taxonomy and Metagenomics of 5 Marine Sponges and Their Microbiomes
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I have a background in working with pearl oyster farms in Asia to collect marine sponges for chemical research and molecular biology studies. I received a BA in Marine Toxicology from UC Santa Cruz studying extracts of marine sponges for medicine. I went on to spend 2 years in a PhD program in Japan studying analytic chemistry, marine genomics, and microbial biotechnology before returning to work with another university on a Japanese pearl farm.
During this internship I worked with DNA extracted from sponges collected on a Japanese pearl farm from 2014-2016. I used DNA primers designed to amplify sequences from sponges and their microbes for their identification. This allowed me to finally identify the sponges I worked with many years ago. I also used a method to sequence all the DNA from each sample for metagenomic analysis. Both of these techniques used Illumina Next Generation Sequencing.
I will visit England the same month as our Biosymposium to present on my work searching for drugs from marine sponges. I will shortly thereafter return to Asia to work with a large Indonesian pearl oyster farm to collect sponges and grow coral for ecological restoration.
Zak (left) with internship mentor Dr. Li (right), in front of the Illumina MiSeq machine used to sequence DNA amplicons for taxonomic identification of marine sponges and their microbes.
Zak Kulberg - Molecular Taxonomy and Metagenomics of 5 Marine Sponges and Their Microbiomes - Spring 2022 CCSF Bioscience Internship.pdfGoogle Sites
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