ABSTRACT
André de Roos's first research internship during his biology studies took him to northern France, where he was equipped with the first generation of genetic methodologies to study salamander hybrids. Trudging through fields in waders, he caught salamanders and prepared tissue samples from small pieces of their flesh. He placed these samples on plates of agar gel and applied electrical voltage – the electrophoresis technique. Since different salamander species possess distinct genetic characteristics, proteins from their tissues migrate through the gel at different speeds. This allowed the team to determine whether they were dealing with hybrid species, which would exhibit a mixture of two distinct migration patterns. At least, that was the theory.
