Rachael Karns

Rachael Karns

Aug 24, 2016

Group 6 Copy 213
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Sharks are Friends, NOT food.

Hello Friends of Sharks:

I wanted to give you a bit of insight as to how I got interested in understanding sharks. When I was 8 years old, my mother passed away from Ovarian cancer. I was an angry child, and also a curious one, so I started trying to understand why there wasn't a cure for cancer yet, and what I could do to change that. 

I stumbled upon the alternative medicine solution of taking shark cartilage pills as a cancer relief agent or even some went as far as to call it a cure. I immediately got excited, thinking I had found answers and a way to improve the Cancer research field in an interesting way. Once I started to read up on it, however, I realized that most of the literature was incomplete or inconclusive. However, I was hooked on sharks. I immediately changed direction and decided I wanted to understand all I could about them, how they effect the ocean as a whole, and what we can do to help them. 

I decided that Sharks are friends, not food.

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About This Project

Shark microbiomes, the partial or collective genes from the microbial communities, remain under characterized in the field of animal genomics. Characterizing the microbiome of various shark species will allow identification of the most important microbial "symbionts", which are an animal's normal flora. Four anatomical areas of each individual shark will be sampled for microbial analysis to determine community composition: Skin, mouth, gills, and cloaca.

Blast off!

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