Dr Drift - Sohana Singh
Dr Sohana Singh: Scientific Programmer at The South African Sugarcane Research Institute. Former post-doctoral fellow at the Oceanographic Research Institute (ORI), South African Association of Marine Biological Research (SAAMBR). Connect: Twitter @Sohana_Singh
Her Current Work: As a scientific programmer, Sohana has taken her interest in data, data analysis, and coding that she developed as a post-doctoral fellow to the next level with a job dedicated to this type of work. Modern-day agriculture relies on data to ensure that just the right amount of water, fertilizers and pesticides are used. Use too much and it costs you more or damages the environment. Use too little and you don’t get the amount of crop you need. And with climate change happening there is all sorts of modeling that scientists do to help farmers anticipate and cope with changes that might occur. This is the type of work that Sohana is now involved in. The skills she developed in marine science are transferrable to a completely different field!
Her Previous Work: We profiled Sohana when she was working as a marine geneticist. She’s moved on but the type of work that she did is just as important and interesting as it was before.
Sohana is mapping the microscopic world of zooplankton, tiny creatures that never grow bigger than the microscopic, such as copepods, and the larval forms of crabs, lobsters, jellyfish and more. Zooplankton are a critical food source for so many organisms in the ocean and are important in their own right as the baby form of adult animals and as part of the carbon cycle in the oceans.
Sohana collects samples out at sea using huge nets that are placed at different depths in the water column. The contents of the net is collected and back in the lab she processes the samples to extract the DNA. There are certain genes, called “barcode” genes that are different from one organism to the next. Using the molecular biology technique PCR (polymerase chain reaction), Sohana reads all of the barcode genes in a sample and can determine which zooplankton were in a spot in the ocean. From there she uses her geographic information system (GIS) and data analysis skills in the R programming language, to map the diversity of zooplankton in a given area, model where they move. The big question she’s trying to answer, is how do marine protected areas (MPAs), affect the diversity of zooplankton in the ocean and whether MPAs are connected, allowing organisms to move from one to another and thrive in a bigger area.
Her Education: Sohana received her PhD in seascape genetics. She studied how larval dispersal and ocean currents affect genetic diversity in a species.
Her Hashtags: #geneticist #seaDNA #codeoflife #genetics #sequencetospecies #womaninscience #womeninstem