Learn more about Decamicron Labs, a research oriented fish store!

[Decamicron Labs Verified Sponsor]

Hey guys!

I'm Adam and I'm the owner of Decamicron Labs. We're a new online fish store that is dedicated to doing marine biology research. We're excited to be part of Reef2Reef.

To celebrate, I've made a lot of postings in the Reef2Reef marketplace for some rare and uncommon fish! Reef2Reef protects your fish through escrow until they arrive, so your guarantee is WATERTIGHT! However, all Reef2Reef postings are DOA only. We have extended guarantee options available on our website.

Feel free to ask us if you want WYSIWYG options, what we're currently working on in our research, and any other questions you might have!

 

[redacted_]

What sort of research are you doing?

 

[Decamicron Labs Verified Sponsor]

What sort of research are you doing?

Thanks for responding! We've got a bunch of internal projects to improve things on the commercial side, but we also have some ones that'd be interesting to you guys!

I have a background in molecular biology and systematics of molluscs. Recently, I found out that there are tonnes of cryptic species in the aquarium trade! Theres been some recent advances in DNA sequencing technology that lets people sequence much more DNA in one go, but these need a guide called a primer. So, I put my background to good use and designed a few new primers to work on these undescribed species!

I can't share much right now since we're still in the data collection phase, but it is starting to look like there may be some new species of clownfish and wrasse hiding in many wild shipments!

 

[KrisReef]

Peter B. Moyle would appreciate this information.

 

[elonmusk123]

Thanks for responding! We've got a bunch of internal projects to improve things on the commercial side, but we also have some ones that'd be interesting to you guys!

I have a background in molecular biology and systematics of molluscs. Recently, I found out that there are tonnes of cryptic species in the aquarium trade! Theres been some recent advances in DNA sequencing technology that lets people sequence much more DNA in one go, but these need a guide called a primer. So, I put my background to good use and designed a few new primers to work on these undescribed species!

I can't share much right now since we're still in the data collection phase, but it is starting to look like there may be some new species of clownfish and wrasse hiding in many wild shipments!

Are you sure youre not looking at a designer clownfish haha

 

[Decamicron Labs Verified Sponsor]

Peter B. Moyle would appreciate this information.

I'm sure he would! We've talked to many taxonomists about these projects.

Peter looks like he focuses on salmonids, which are actually genetically very different to most reef fishes, which are percomorphs. Some primers in the literature actually only work on one or the other. While they're both fish, they are actually about as different as humans are to platypuses! Both salmon vs percomorphs and humans vs platypuses branched off somewhere in the early Mesozoic

 

[Decamicron Labs Verified Sponsor]

Are you sure youre not looking at a designer clownfish haha

Haha that would be quite a blunder. We're quite certain what we have isn't a color/pattern morph. Thats what the primers are for! You can think of primers as little molecules that guide and tell the machine where to sequence. We have designed these to target some very long stretches of DNA that evolve very slowly (think on the order of geological time, not human lifespans), so any large differences cannot be explained by new patterns that appear over a few dozen generations.

However, we do have some very high grade helmet Picassos imported directly from Bali Aquarich that are available! I specifically requested for perfect facial markings. A lot of the ski-masks and some nebulas have already sold out. If you're interested in a WYSIWYG option, shoot me a message! We can also pair them for you. A good chunk of our profits go directly towards sequencing and research costs!

 

[KrisReef]

I'm sure he would! We've talked to many taxonomists about these projects.

Peter looks like he focuses on salmonids, which are actually genetically very different to most reef fishes, which are percomorphs. Some primers in the literature actually only work on one or the other. While they're both fish, they are actually about as different as humans are to platypuses! Both salmon vs percomorphs and humans vs platypuses branched off somewhere in the early Mesozoic

“Native “ fishes, with a focus more towards California and the West where he taught. The funding money is always flowing for the popular consumer species, but I can’t explain his gushing joy when we netted a logperch out of Putah Creek during a class sampling trip. That was fun, but paled in comparison to his horror when we gill netted 97 native red band trout from Eagle Lake after a short few hour set. Previous years net sets had yielded “Too few fish to properly graph the curve for ange and growth”. He looked at me sideways when the first net came up with enough fish for my graphing project proposal .

We ate smoked fish for the remainder of the month.

 

[Decamicron Labs Verified Sponsor]

“Native “ fishes, with a focus more towards California and the West where he taught. The funding money is always flowing for the popular consumer species, but I can’t explain his gushing joy when we netted a logperch out of Putah Creek during a class sampling trip. That was fun, but paled in comparison to his horror when we gill netted 97 native red band trout from Eagle Lake after a short few hour set. Previous years net sets had yielded “To few fish to properly graph the curve forage and growth”. He looked at me sideways when the first net came up with enough fish for my graphing project proposal .

We ate smoked fish for the remainder of the month.

Sounds like some fun memories to reminisce. I'm not really familiar with the freshwater species out on the West coast. Were you in academia before as well?

 

[redacted_]

Nice, this sounds very impressive. Why aren't you using universal primers? I have a very superficial understanding about PCR because of COVID, I just asked AI about this

 

[Decamicron Labs Verified Sponsor]

Nice, this sounds very impressive. Why aren't you using universal primers? I have a very superficial understanding about PCR because of COVID, I just asked AI about this

This is actually a really good question. Generally, when taxonomists look at a species, they amplify using universal primers, which are designed to single out one specific stretch of DNA. These are usually 300 to 1000 letters long.

However, the issue is that a fish genome is around 10^9 letters, so you are only sampling around 0.0001% of the genome and all from a single location. This is very statistically correlated and provides a very noisy estimate of the fish's natural history. We could use more primers to sample more places, or use NGS technology to sequence the whole genome, but these approaches are more work or more costly.

What Decamicron is doing is leveraging some more recent advances in PCR as well as sequencing to target longer stretches of DNA, around 10,000-30,000 letters. We've designed them so that they cover the DNA covered by multiple universal primer pairs, so we only need to do 1 PCR reaction to get what might have required several reactions!

 

[Decamicron Labs Verified Sponsor]

Nice, this sounds very impressive. Why aren't you using universal primers? I have a very superficial understanding about PCR because of COVID, I just asked AI about this

But yes, if what you were really trying to ask is whether we'd be able to compare DNA to existing databases, we have thought about that