
Rebecca Hochstein, who earned her doctorate in MSU’s Department of Microbiology And Immunology in 2015, is shown collecting samples in a hot spring in Yellowstone National Park. Credit: Derek Loudermilk
For seven years as a graduate student at Montana State University, Rebecca Hochstein hiked into the backcountry of Yellowstone National Park.
Careful to avoid the bears whose tracks she saw on the trail, she collected samples from a 176-degree hot spring at the south edge of Hayden Valley. Then she returned to MSU, where she processed the samples, analyzed her findings and eventually focused her doctoral research on a lemon-shaped virus whose secrets she continues to reveal.
Rebecca Hochstein, who earned her doctorate in MSU’s Department of Microbiology and Immunology in 2015, is lead author of a study that explains how a lemon-shaped virus assembles itself and how the virus ejects the DNA it carries into host cells.
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