Preservation of jellies

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Permalink Reply by Frederic Sinniger on April 19, 2010 at 3:22pm

According to my very limited experience in fixing gelatinous zooplankton, you might end up with not much left but a "residue" of tissues and salt precipitate at the bottom of your tube. This might be good enough for DNA, but I would not expect much more analysis on such material. Large specimens might give somehow better results (I tried ctenophores, jellyfishes, and tunicates). Tunicates chains would "disassemble" upon fixation. I used 99% ethanol to reach a final concentration of about 70-75%. Sorry not to be of more help, I am more focused on benthic organisms...

Permalink Reply by Jon Norenburg on November 16, 2010 at 10:58am

Check into DESS (DMSO EDTA Saturated Salt), widely used now in nematode community, first used with vertebrate blood samples, started gaining popularity with invertebrates after positive reports by jelly researchers at Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. In my experience it probably is the best preservative for doing double duty for morphology and DNA. It also is not regulated as a hazardous material for transport purposes or lab work. A search on "DESS DMSO DNA" will get you lots of hits.
See:
Dawson, Mike N., Raskoff, Kevin A., and Jacobs, David K. (1998) Field preservation of marine
invertebrate tissue for DNA analyses. Molecular Marine Biology and Biotechnology 7(2): 145-152.
Attached is a file compiled by Melissa Yoder for nematode folks (note that you do not need to make your own EDTA, buying 1M prepared solution is simpler).

Attachments:

• DMSO_EDTA_NaCl protocol.pdf, 135 KB

Permalink Reply by jagadeesan on February 3, 2011 at 7:02am

Thank you for your commands Norenburg,
I will try this DESS in my upcoming field trips