Alexandre Borentain

My name is Alexandre Borentain, I am a student at Princeton High School working on virology in turtles.

I have been studying turtle virology for over a year now and it has become a great interest for me. I have written a review article about sea turtle viruses which initiated me to the topic of turtle and virology. Not long after this review article, I participated in the WSSP (Waksman Student Scholars Program) at Rutgers University. In this program I participated in genetic study of a duckweed gene that codes for a protein involved in photosynthesis. The procedure included PCR, gene electrophoresis, gene sequencing and analysis. All of these procedures will be used in my current experiment on turtle herpesviruses.

My turtle virology experiment not only investigates the genetic aspect of the virus, it also has multiple environmental variables, and a large part of the research will be done in the turtles’ natural habitat.

The final goal in the following years is to discover a pattern of viral transmission in turtles that could then be translated to other species and viruses.

April 2019