Congratulations Olivia!!!

Congratulations to Olivia Bianco on successfully defending her honors thesis and graduating with research distinction! Olivia’sthesis focuses on characterizing whether and how royal jelly, a substance produced by honey bees, might affect seasonal responses in mosquitoes. Olivia was co-advised by Dr. Matthias Klein in Food Science and Technology and used molecular (qRT-PCR and RNA interference), phenotypic measures (egg follicle size, macronutrient stores) and metabolomics. Her dataset is truly impressive and surprising; she found that consuming royal jelly completely reversed the seasonal responses of mosquitoes (e.g. caused mosquitoes reared in summer-like conditions to show winter-like characteristics and caused mosquitoes reared in winter-like conditions to display summer-like characteristics). Olivia is currently preparing her thesis to be submitted soon as first author manuscript to the Journal of Experimental Biology. In the fall she will attend OSU Vet School! Way to go Olivia!!!!

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