Radley Castillo

In Radley’s first year at Foster High he was in Intro To Biotechnology and working on projects such as:

Studying the effects of different environments on nematodes, dosing yeast with Caspofungin, and extracting the DNA from a strawberry. This was done in Renz Lab and helped him hone his skills for lab work, like pipetting. The yEVO yeast project was by far the largest one worked on in his freshman year. This project entailed Radley to observe the mutations in yeast when it was slowly dosed with a drug called caspofungin. He had multiple tubes of yeast that all managed to survive through the year. The point of the project was to see how well the yeast would adapt. He also learned how to work with a lab group/partners and utilize them in order to be successful too.

Current Projects

Radley is currently working on pouring Agar and LBS agar petri plates and learning the ins and outs of a working lab, like using a lab notebook to catalog and record data and findings. This year is the first year he will not have as much help from the teacher and will have to work together with the whole class in order to make sure that each lab will work as smoothly as possible. Radley hopes to have his name on a paper in the future. He would also like to become more familiar with the  lab equipment and how things work.

Personal