The Sci-Files – 08/25/2019 – Kayla, Justin, Jon – Prenatal Infection Affecting Pregnancy
August 23, 2019
On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Kayla Conner, Justin Lee, and Jon Kaletka, all of them are graduate students from the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics.
At the Hardy lab, they lab study prenatal infection and how it affects pregnancy outcome/development. Jon’s research focuses on understanding how Listeria infection changes the extracellular vesicle production in host cells, and how those regulate the immune response. Kayla studies how infection changes the structure/function of the placenta. Justin studies how prenatal infection/inflammation alters brain development in the fetus.
If you’re interested in talking about your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, please email Chelsie and Danny at [email protected] You can ask questions for our future episodes here. Check The Sci-Files out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube!

Chelsie is a Biomedical Engineering Ph.D. student at Michigan State University. She studies what happens to the extracellular matrix of cells after they have been stressed. She co-hosts "The Sci-Files" with Daniel Puentes. Together they explore the different topics that MSU students research on "The Sci-Files" at WDBM.

Daniel is a graduate student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, where he does research at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory. His research involves measuring the mass of radioactive nuclei, and how it can tell us how protons and neutrons are arranged inside of a nucleus. This research also helps scientists understand how the elements were created in different stellar environments! At WDBM, he and Chelsie Boodoo co-host The Sci-Files.