Survive, Thrive and Communicate: Baskin Award Winner Lynne Hagelthorn Explores the Chemical World of Plants
When Lynne Hagelthorn was in high school, she planned to pursue studying history as a college student. She loved speech and debate and was fascinated by how humans use language to understand and construct reality. But during her junior year, she took a biotech class and through it secured an internship in the lab of Distinguished Professor Richard Michelmore, director of the UC Davis Genome Center. Everything changed after that.
After learning basic lab techniques, Hagelthorn would explore the Genome Center’s high-tech facility.
“I’d see like all the posters and the research done and I’d be like, ‘This is something I want to do for the rest of my life,’” said Hagelthorn, now a senior majoring in biochemistry and molecular biology.
Throughout her college career, Hagelthorn further indulged her passion for research. She joined the lab of Assistant Professor Philipp Zerbe and toured the world of plant biochemistry, learning how plant chemical compounds can be used to benefit human health. In that time, she co-authored research papers published in ChemBioChem, Plant Physiology, PLOS ONE and The Plant Journal.