lab

During the fall semester at the University of South Carolina, I was enrolled in a course called Marine Science 311. This course included a lab that met once each week. My favorite lab that I was able to partake in was one entitled Sea Urchin Fertilization. I had never really taken the time to consider how such alien looking organisms would be able to reproduce until I was involved in this study. As it turns out, I learned that sea urchin egg fertilization actually happens outside of the body in open sea water. In order to recreate this in a lab setting, my classmates and I had access to several sea urchins, their genders unknown to us. In order to determine the genders of the organisms, we had to inject each individual with .5 M potassium chloride.  Once injected, we were…