How to Build a Plant Gravity Sensor Paper Circuit

What do a plant root tip and a electronic tilt sensor have in common? Both can sense gravity! Anyone with houseplants knows that plants grow towards light, but fewer people know that plants still sense which way to grow in total darkness. Gravity-sensing in plants is especially important for developing seeds that might be buried […]

Everyday Items in the Astrobotany Lab

“Why do we have a jar of marbles on the lab bench?” I asked my lab mate. I had been staring the the container for months and wondering how they fit into our plant biology research. “Oh,” my lab mate replied. “Marbles make great temporary lids for my reactions in heated test tubes. They keep […]

A Gentle Critique of a Biological Life Support System Review

Dear Life Journal Editors: As a person with strong interest in biological life support systems (BLSS), I was excited to read a recent review published in your journal by Alex Ellery entitled “Supplementing Closed Ecological Life Support Systems with In-Situ Resources on the Moon“. However, as I read it, my excitement turned to dismay. Although […]

Designing MixStix Space Biology Experiments: A Teacher’s Guide

One of my favorite parts of being involved in space biology, is getting to do outreach for students. I’ve had the pleasure of zooming with several classes of kids involved in the STARward STEM program, a project-based learning experience where elementary students design experiments for spaceflight. I’m writing this blog post for teachers involved in […]

Failure is an option: How to beat imposter syndrome when your science isn’t working

When I was a teenager, I dreamed of being an engineer at NASA. To prepare myself for my dreamed-of-profession, I set upon the task of “learning to build things”. I cobbled together a motor out of a knitting needle and cork, I attempted to build bird houses, and I tried to teach myself to solder. […]

DIY Clinostat: Retrofit a Tube Mixer

I’ve mentioned before how plants sense gravity and how we can trick them into thinking they are “weightless” like astronauts in spaceflight by using a slowly rotating device called a clinostat. This post is the first of DIY Clinostat instructions that may be useful for other students and home hobbyists interested in ground-based astrobotany research. […]

What Does Extracting RNA Look Like?

mRNA is all in the news these days, since it’s a key component of Covid vaccines. I’ve written before about how RNA functions, but that’s all very abstract. What does it actually look like to work with RNA? It’s very much like cooking with miniature equipment: tiny smoothie makers, tiny coffee filters, and very fast […]

What Does Charles Darwin Have to Do with Astrobotany?

“Darwin was wrong!” I shouted in frustration to my husband. I was trying to re-create an experiment of Darwin’s for an outreach event at a local museum. My plants were supposed to be leaning towards the light, but instead they were just kind of sitting there. “Darwin was wrong?” my husband laughed. “Are you sure […]

Mutant Powers

Movies are full of mutant creations that cause havoc. Sometimes these mutants are science experiments gone awry; sometimes they got too close to radioactive waste. (Occasionally, the mutants are turtles with a penchant for pizza.) Whatever the origin story, mutant creatures usually gain some amazing new ability or super strength; so when I tell people […]

Picturesque Plant Cells

You are a spectacular specimen. If you zoom in on any part of your body, you would discover that you are made up of thousands of microscopic self-contained living entities—your cells. Each of these tiny packages of life can grow, feed, sense, and reproduce like an independent living thing. But your cells are not independent; […]