A UC San Diego graduate who went on to become a NASA astronaut was back in town this week. Kate Rubins, the first person to ever sequence DNA in space, spoke at the BIO International Convention being held in downtown San Diego this week.
Before she was breaking new ground in low-gravity research, Rubins was earning her bachelor's degree in molecular biology at UC San Diego and doing undergraduate research on HIV at the Salk Institute.
At a conference talk on Wednesday, Rubins discussed her 2016 stay on the International Space Station. She recounted the difficulty of using scientific equipment not held down by gravity.
"I learned very quickly to keep an eye on your experiments," she said. "Because they will walk away."
Rubins said sequencing DNA in space was an important step toward further research into how basic biology is affected by long-term space travel.
"We've evolved to be constantly in a one-G field," she said. "And we haven't necessarily ever been in this place where we no longer have the force of gravity on our bodies."
