ABOVE: A colony of spotted wing Drosophila flies entomologist Hannah Burrack is maintaining at home
COURTESY HANNAH BURRACK
Labs around the world have been closed for weeks, months in some places, as orders to shelter in place and maintain physical distancing seek to minimize the spread of COVID-19. While some scientists have turned to writing manuscripts and grants and making inventories of their freezers to keep busy while away from the bench, others have brought experiments home, turning bathrooms, laundry rooms, and kitchens into makeshift labs—sometimes seeing an opportunity to explore new questions, other times trying out of desperation to prevent projects from moving backwards.
Researchers at TeakOrigin, a food-data company, created an entire initiative dubbed “lab@home.” Under normal circumstances, the company purchases thousands of fruits and vegetables from different grocers in Boston and Los Angeles and scans each piece using optical spectrometers designed to detect levels of different vitamins and ...
