Maiko Kitaoka
Cell Biology
UC Berkeley
I’m a PhD student in Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, studying mechanisms of chromosome segregation in Xenopus frog species. Basically, I use different frog species to figure out what happens to their chromosomes when you try to hybridize these species. It’s pretty crazy and insane and awesome all at once. I mostly use a little bit of biochemistry, a bunch of cell biology, and a lot of microscopy in my work, and one of my favorite spots in the lab is in the dark, seated next to our laser scanning confocal microscope, staring at a fluorescent frog embryo.