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- The biology lab here at the Exploratorium is unique in that we're not a research lab, so in most academic labs you have just maybe one type of organism that you're studying. But here we have around 40, and then if you include the plants, we have maybe another 40 different species of plants so we have a huge variety of organisms that we take care of. We take care of termites and cultivate the bacteria and microorganisms that live in their guts. And then we have a variety of fish, freshwater, and marine all types of invertebrates, sea stars, sea urchins, and enemies and then we also have just one mammal we have mice they're a model organism, part of our model organism exhibit. And then we also do quite a bit of cell culturing so we have three different types of human cells, we have cardiac myocytes, which are human heart cells that we keep alive and use in an exhibit. And then we have two different types of cancer, one of them comes from Henrietta Lacks. I manage the lab that supports all of the biology-related exhibits in the Living Systems Gallery. In the museum there's no visitors, I don't even know how to describe it it's like a shell of what it once was. But we still have our living organisms to care for so that's probably the one constant, we don't have to do as much care for them 'cause they're not living in exhibits, they can sort of have minimal feed, and minimal care. Between myself and the three technicians that I work with we all come in separately and try and keep social distancing from each other to come in and care for the plants and the animals and microorganisms.

- My job in normal times is a very highly varied job. My job is to make sure that all of the organisms that we have, are well taken care of and fed and clean and happy. And also to make sure that the exhibits that we have in our gallery are all taken care of and fed and happy and functioning.

- We actually are lucky and then a lot of our exhibits are observational, so our gallery will stay pretty similar to what it was before the pandemic. Cells to Self is a collection of exhibits on helping people to learn about what the various cells within their bodies do to make them who they are. Most people might think of a cell as like just a blob or a very tiny sphere and maybe there's a couple of them in their body but there's actually trillions of them. They're microscopic and they have all different types of jobs that they do in your body, so your blood cell and your heart cells and your bone cells and your nerve cells actually all quite look different. And they do different things and all of these different types of cells within your body come from one fertilized cell an egg, and that develops over time so it's sort of the, the amazing ability of the cells in your body to do that and then create a complex organism that is you.

- So we do a couple of different demos where you get to look at your own cheek cells or a plant cell under a microscope and compare and contrast how we differ from plants. And we also show people DNA like stretched out from a fruit fly, larva's, salivary glands. We also show people the moment that fertilization happens between sea urchin gametes, where we bring an egg and a sperm together underneath a microscope and you get to see the actual moment that it becomes fertilized you can see a noticeable change.

- One visit I think can be very powerful, a visitor may come away having all these ideas about genetics and DNA and maybe a slight ability to talk about it and share it with another person to me that's the most powerful thing, hopefully a visitor will see something that excites them via natural selection exhibit about goldfish and then they can go and share it with a friend.

- There's so much exposure here to all kinds of different things that are not usually thought of because they're tiny. My hope is that you can experience something under a microscope here and let that kind of expand your view of the world outside of here.

- I so look forward to coming in might one day awaken and honestly I wish I was coming in more. It gives me a really strong sense of connection to how my life used to be and how I hope it will be again soon in the future, I'm still seeing some co-workers I'll be at at a distance. And I still get to take care of all of my organisms and critters and plants and microorganisms and fish and having them stay the same and knowing that they're still healthy and alive, it gives me hope that things will return.