Helsinki summer experience

Hi! I am Brenda Felix, a student from Mexico who is spending a summer scholarship given for ENES-UNAM, Campus Leon, which allowed me to collaborate with this amazing group.

I have to say, that I’ve been delighted with this big experience. I never thought living a work experience so far from my country. I must admit I was expecting different weather, since this summer has been exceptionally warm (even for me coming from Mexico). Even though, I’ve been enjoying the summer’s activities as a Finnish. They really know how to enjoy the summer.

In the lab, this is my first experience working with viruses. I am working with Potato virus A (PVA), where I’ve been agroinfiltrating the PVA virus in Nicotiana benthamiana plants to measure the Renilla luciferase expression and doing a set of RNA extractions on these infected plants. All these work is to understand the systemic virus infection of PVA in plants.

I am feeling so enthusiastic about working with Kristiina’s group, it has a friendly environment where the collaborators are willing to help you all the time. Swarnalok has been very helpful in my learning process, he has been supporting me all the time and sharing me his experience, I am so grateful to him.

As soon as I finish this great experience, I hope I can contribute with my knowledge to the science and help in understanding of plant defense for future agricultural problems.

For the moment, I’ll keep enjoying this big opportunity and the nature of this amazing city, going to the lab biking and admiring the views of the forest, eating wild berries and, of course, getting more lab experience to enhance my scientific impact.