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 […]

Laying the Groundwork

When I tell people that got a NC Space Grant Fellowship for plant biology research, the first question I get asked is “So when do your plants go to space?” When I reply, “They don’t. My plants will be in the lab,” I get quizzical looks. What most people don’t realize is that most space […]

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Welcome, Fellow Explorer

Thanks for joining my journey to explore space biology as a graduate student in Plant and Microbial Biology at NC State University. I will be working on a plant biology project funded by NASA through the NC Space Grant. My project strives to unravel part of the mystery of how plants sense light and gravity, […]

Growing Beyond Earth

I have not been idle in the space biology realm during my period of radio silence. I formed a team for the NASA and Fairchild Garden Growing Beyond Earth Maker Challenge and we’ve been busy tinkering away. This year’s “SPACE Garden” challenge was to design a system that would grow as many lettuce plants as […]