Splash Biography



KATHLEEN GORDON, First year PhD student in Genetics



Major: Genetics

College/Employer: Cornell

Year of Graduation: G

Picture of Kathleen Gordon

Brief Biographical Sketch:

I am a first year PhD student in the field of Genetics, Genomics, and Development. I graduated with a BS in Biology and a BA in French from Indiana University in 2015. I worked as a laboratory technician at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln for two years before moving to Ithaca for my PhD. I use my favorite model organism, Drosophila melanogaster, to study how bacterial infections affect reproduction.



Past Classes

  (Clicking a class title will bring you to the course's section of the corresponding course catalog)

P384: All about DNA: How to extract the material, decipher the code, and translate the message! in Splash Fall 17 (Nov. 04, 2017)
What do strawberries and humans have in common? DNA! DNA controls how tall a tree can grow, how tadpoles become frogs, and how many fingers and toes we have. In this class, students will learn all about the structure, organization, transcription, and translation of DNA. Students will learn about how DNA acts as a code and how to decipher the messages it contains. We will discuss how the discovery of DNA changed our understanding of genetics and how DNA is studied today. We will learn about how DNA sequencing works and compare human DNA to other living things. Finally, students will isolate DNA from strawberries themselves!