Elana is from Groton, NY and is currently a student at Groton High School. In the McCouch lab, Elana is working with graduate student, Anjali Iyer. Their project is focused on identifying a section of the rice genome that is responsible for this crop’s resistance against bacterial blight. This disease can destroy up to 30% of the rice crops in Southeast Asia. For this project, Elana extracts DNA using a matrix mill, performs PCR reactions, PAGE gel electrophoresis, and analyzes segregation of microsatellitemarkers in large populations segregating for bacterial blight resistance.