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My lab focuses on synthetic biology research, specifically, building synthetic cells for studying modern terrestrial life and for investigating the possibilities for life elsewhere in the Solar System. Our work is not directly applicable to detection, prevention, or treatment of viral diseases, so there’s nothing immediately useful for the COVID-19 effort that we could be doing in the lab. Thus, for everyone’s safety our lab has been working remotely since the middle of March as a result of first a campus-wide non-essential operation shutdown order, followed by a state-wide shelter in place order a couple days later.
Not being able to do lab work means we cannot make much progress on any of our experimental projects. This doesn’t mean we cannot get any work done, though. I share our experiences here with the hope that they may be useful to other researchers during the current shutdown, ...
