Handling the Heat: Extracting RNA for Heat-Shock Gene Analysis

Climate change can have a variety of negative effects on organisms, ranging from processes within cells to global distributions. A family of genes of interest are Heat shock genes, which are expressed from stresses. Our research focuses on the production of heat shock proteins (HSPs) in the cells of developing turtle embryos during heatwave exposure because these proteins protect cell integrity, function and prevent cell death. The image depicts the first step in the quantification of HSPs where we extract RNA from cells. The bright red highlights the RNA being removed from the tube, while the background and the scientist are grey-scaled to show the science behind this research is precise, and focused—capturing a moment of careful molecular work.