Kristoff Misquitta (Stuy '20) won the Genes in Space contest in 2020, making him Stuy's third winner. His proposal involved the use of the miniPCR thermal cycler and the p51 fluorescent viewer. His objective was to monitor the gene expression level of genes in the liver responsible for drug metabolism. His experiment was launched to the ISS during the summer of 2021, and he has been following up on it since. Finally, the results are published! Biology teacher, Ms. Jessica Quenzer is also noted in the acknowledgements section. You can view the published paper here.
The first part of the experiment was a proof of concept using the equipment to detect low levels of SARS-COV-2. (Last spring, in the Genetics elective, my students performed a variant of this protocol using nonviral DNA, and they got it to work.) Congrats to Kristoff!
Publicity Link with photos: https://www.genesinspace.org/news/press/tool-for-viewing-biomolecules-on-the-international-space-station-is-validated-in-student-led-publication/?mc_cid=d5536124f8&mc_eid=8c72d02f4e
