In this season-opening episode of Absolute Gene-ius, hosts Jordan Ruggieri and Lisa Crawford talk with Lexi Heger, PhD candidate at Michigan State University, about applying qPCR and dPCR to understand and manage devastating grapevine pathogens. From spore trapping to fungicide resistance, Lexi shares how molecular tools are helping agriculture go greener and smarter.
What do vineyards, airborne spores, and digital PCR have in common? Turns out – quite a lot. This episode kicks off Season 4 by going green with plant pathology and molecular diagnostics.
Lexi Heger, a PhD candidate in plant pathology and molecular plant sciences at Michigan State University, joins the show to discuss her work on grapevine diseases, particularly downy mildew caused by Plasmopara viticola. Lexi explains how she developed qPCR assays to differentiate cryptic pathogen clades, redesigned multiplex assays to track multiple grape pathogens simultaneously, and explored how digital PCR can add value when sensitivity really matters, like when detecting rare alleles linked to fungicide resistance. The conversation dives into real-world challenges like sampling air, plant, and soil environments, managing PCR inhibitors, and translating academic research into actionable tools for growers. Together, Jordan, Lisa, and Lexi highlight why qPCR and dPCR aren’t competing technologies, but complementary tools that support smarter disease management in agriculture.
In Career Corner, Lexi reflects on her lifelong love of plants, the joy of gardening, and the mentors who helped cultivate her scientific curiosity. From killing plants “to save them,” to embracing plant puns and favorite pathogens, this segment is a reminder that great science often grows from genuine passion, and a little dirt under your fingernails.
Jordan Ruggieri 00:00
And I wish I was as good at gardening as Lexi is, my garden is full of hybrids. It's a real gene pool party.
Lisa Crawford 00:07
Can we get like sad trombone noises intermixed here?
Jordan Ruggieri 00:26
Welcome to Absolute Gene-ius, a podcast series from Thermo Fisher Scientific. I am Jordan Ruggieri, and we are excited to kick off our fourth season of the Absolute Gene-ius series. In case you missed our teaser for the season, I want to clue you in to some changes. We'll continue to dive into really cool science in an approachable and entertaining manner. The puns are wonderful this season, I promise you. This season, we'll be widening our lens to look beyond just digital PCR, and we'll be covering qPCR and other complementary technologies as well, along with how they work together to accelerate a wide variety of research. Another change for season four, I'm excited to introduce my new co-host, Lisa Crawford.
Lisa Crawford 01:07
Hello listeners. I'm Lisa Crawford. If you want to know more about me, I encourage you to go back and listen to the teaser for the season, where I talk a little bit about myself. But today, we are excited to kick off our fourth season of the series by going green with a certified organic genius, Lexi Heger. Lexi is a PhD candidate in plant pathology and molecular plant sciences at Michigan State University. She's a lifelong plant lover, a budding qPCR and dPCR aficionado, a seasoned plant punster and an all-around fascinating person to talk to. We hope you enjoy today's episode.
Jordan Ruggieri 01:40
Well, thank you so much for being on Absolute Gene-ius. We are so excited to have you on the podcast today.
Lexi Heger 01:51
Thank you. I'm excited to be here. It's fun to bring Ag to this kind of science, I think.
Jordan Ruggieri 01:56
Could you introduce yourself and maybe just give a little bit of background into your science and research.
Lexi Heger 02:01
I am a fifth year PhD student at Michigan State University right now. I have a dual degree in plant pathology and molecular plant sciences, or I will have one. My background is originally in horticulture, where I went to The Ohio State University. I really just loved plants growing up. I didn't really know that you could study plants as a field when I was especially in high school, right. My parents owned a plumbing company, and so I was kind of the weird little black sheep just figuring things out, growing crazy things in the yard. My dad just, they kind of let me have free will and just do things. And then took AP Bio in high school, and my teacher, who's still a mentor to me today, she encouraged me to pursue plant science, and then it kind of just took off from there. Now, looking at my research, our lab is a small fruit and hop pathology lab with Dr. Tim Miles here. We focus on a lot of different fruits and then fruit pathogens. So grapes predominantly, then hops, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries. So, yeah, we got it all. You guys have wine, now we also have beer. There's a lot going on.
Jordan Ruggieri 03:06
This is going to be an exciting episode. So tell me a little bit about this world. I mean, is it, is it mostly studying plants? Are you actually studying, you know, bacteria, virus, yeast, fungus, on and interactions, on the plant themselves?
Lexi Heger 03:24
I try to do a mix of both in my research, because I like the plant side and I also like the pathogen side. I also work with oomycete, so that's a fungal like pathogen. So people often forget that one. I'll call it fungal-like just to keep it, you know, chill for people. But it's also an obligate, so right, it requires a living host to survive, right, and to reproduce, and so that actually adds a whole other level when you're working with it in the lab. I have to keep plants alive. So when you ask that question for me, as a pathologist and as working with an obligate, I'm like, yeah, yeah, I got to do both. But I always have to do both, because if I want to work on this pathogen, I need to keep a plant alive.
Jordan Ruggieri 04:05
With the worst green thumb on the planet, I can only imagine.
Lexi Heger 04:10
We kill a lot of plants. Like, as pathologists, our goal is to kill plants, and to save them. You know, like we kill them to save them.
Jordan Ruggieri 04:18
What is your what is your PhD centered on?
Lexi Heger 04:21
So something that was important to me was getting a PhD that was honestly kind of diverse within my field, so that I could have multiple skills. So really it starts out focused on downy mildew of grape, which is the obligate, oomycete pathogen I was just talking about. It is a very destructive disease of grapevine. I first designed a diagnostic tool using qPCR to differentiate these three cryptic species of Plasmopara viticola, this pathogen. And so we want to differentiate them using these molecular tools so that we could identify them in the field and do further research. So you got to start somewhere to be able to do those long-term studies. And honestly, in the last I guess, even five years of my degree, a lot of works popped up doing that. And so it's been kind of cool to see it develop. Then the second chapter took another turn. I do a lot of spore trapping too. So it's capturing or sampling the air to kind of identify what is present. In terms of pathology outlook, you're usually defining what pathogens are there, how much of them are there, when are they there? Eventually people look at microbiomes, are they interacting? You can go forever and ever, right. And so I redesigned qPCR assays that had been previously published, and I combined them into a multiplex so that we could detect these three really important pathogens of grapevine again, which was downy mildew, same one before, the Botrytis cinerea, which is fungal, and then another obligate fungal pathogen called Erysiphe necator, or powdery mildew. Being able to capture these and then detect them is really important for fungicide programs. And then my last chapter is just looking at, well, not just, I guess, is doing a GWAS study, so genome wide association study, looking at population that's from California that had known botrytis and powdery resistance, and trying to see if, also there was downy mildew resistance, and how that kind of relates looking at it in Michigan environment versus California.
Jordan Ruggieri 06:23
Are these pathogens, are they, are they commonly tested in vineyards? Or is it more, you know, just they, they see something is wrong with the plant, and it's just more kind of a, hey, they, do they tear them up? Like, what exactly happens on a practical level for the, for the farmers?
Lexi Heger 06:41
It depends where you are. Again, it depends. Always comes up. In Michigan, we have more humid environment, right, compared to California or Oregon. The testing isn't as prevalent as we'd like it to be. Usually, you'd want this done early in the season. I want it like before you're really getting a lot of plant growth. Then you can say, hey, we have this here, we should spray fungicides preventatively, because once infection takes over, you're at a loss. At times, there's also phenological stages, right, different development stages of the grapevine, and there's different important timing, time points, for spraying. And so it's really about using these tools in conjunction with that knowledge of like the phenological stages, and knowing okay, if we test this time, we can learn how much is here in terms of what kind of spray program can we use, and people are even or there's been a lot of assays, qPCR assays, designed looking at fungicide resistance detection. So those rare alleles, and we can detect for FRAC 11, which is a fungicide group, we can detect for that fungicide resistance. And then you can tell the growers say, “Hey, you should steer clear of these, because you're going to encourage development of resistance, which means losing control of the disease. And that's just bad.” Testing is, again, very limited. There is a big grant that our lab group was in collaboration with a couple others that did nationwide testing for a few years, and it was a huge success because they were able to track resistance populations around the country, and that's huge. But when funding goes away, right, they aren't able to test anymore, because the need it's just, it's there, but it's not great enough.
Lisa Crawford 08:23
Is that what you think the biggest barrier is, is the funding and cost? Or is it education, because people don't necessarily realize the importance of it, or is it kind of a mix of everything?
Lexi Heger 08:34
I would lean towards a mix of everything, because when you say people, you know, my immediate thought is well the growers know, right. But ‘people’ is not just the growers, right. And so you need to advocate for the growers to the broader population and so, but yes, I think, when I think of sampling and testing, for me, the air sampling thing comes hand in hand again. And so setting up tools like that that aren’t meant for research, or that are meant for research, not necessarily for growers. That's a whole other barrier is like resources is more than money, right. It's time, it’s effort, it's knowledge, and so it's kind of wild. That's been a big part of the background of my PhD is thinking about, what are the barriers to improvement? And it's a lot of times, is that transition from research to applicability.
Jordan Ruggieri 09:22
When I can imagine, too, we, you know, even talking a little bit about the workflow, you know, you're probably looking at air samples, but you're probably also looking at plant and soil, or at least having particulates of those in the sample, which can pose inhibitory risks, right, too, on the workflow, and on the detection end. Is that something you run across regularly as well? Any of the polyphenolics or, you know, the cell debris, the cell wall debris, that that can inhibit detection?
Lexi Heger 09:53
That was a big, you know, concern. And thing we think about sometimes, we think about too late, I think, with plant pathology at times. Like sometimes early in my projects, you know, as a first-year PhD, it was like, you forget that's another part. You're so focused on the detection of just straight up detecting, but yes, that's been a large focus, and you're right with our field, especially even the air samples. I had bugs stuck on my sampling rods. I had dirt, I had everything, and I personally don't know if it was inhibitory, because I had other issues. So I had extraction, some other extraction issues, but we, but usually the results are clean enough and they're consistent enough where we're not really seeing that issue. But I've seen other papers where they were doing the same thing and looking to see was there, what was the inhibition? They had internal controls. I couldn't use one because I already had three assays, or three probes, built in. So it was just like, I guess this is our trade off, right. But that is a huge concern in plant pathology, especially people with soil and a lot of times they focus on, you know, making sure that's not being a problem. But I think it depends on the method and depends on the extraction too, we've found, right. It's not just point blank, “Do you have inhibitors?”
Jordan Ruggieri 10:39
I mean, I, this coming from the lab, working with some of these different samples as well. I mean, it's a, it is a headache, sometimes. Taking a step back even as well. You know, you mentioned that you have different clades that you're looking at. Do they have different impacts on the grape plants and on growing? Or is there, is there an actual, like, in like, like, practical or like, real implication of having a different clade, that is, you know, on your plant.
Lexi Heger 11:30
That's the big question, and it's an ongoing question. And like I said before, you know, there's been more publications discussing, you know, the implications, because we don't really know yet. One of the interesting things is that, so there's, I talk about three clades. There are a few more, but they're not as economically important, meaning they don't infect cultivated grapevines. In the United States, we have all three of these economically important clades. But in other countries, we do not. And so there's also that. Why hasn't it moved? What does that mean? Why is this happening? The biggest clade is called clade aestivalis. Biggest clade, as in the most worldwide. It is very destructive, and that's the one we've always talked about. Historically whenever we've seen literature about P. viticola, Plasmopara viticola, it's been about that we just didn't know it. Because they've done studies looking to trace and see what which clade was it that was, has been everywhere, but we still don't really know. We try to look at, in my lab, with one of my lab mates, we looked at choosing fungicide resistance. And so we're trying to see, can we associate? Because in cucumber, in a similar pathogen, very closely related, they have seen that there is fungicide resistance based on clade. And so we were like, “Oh, is that something that's happening here?” And as of now, we, we can't say that there is. Kind of surprising. I mean, from a from a pathology nerd side was kind of like, dang it, thought we were really on to something, you know. But also those clades are different. I mean, those that system is different, cucumber is different. There's a lot of things, right? So there are more aggressive within three clades. There's one that infects the wild grape, and that one is not it's much more host specific wild grape, for one is its main host, and so it doesn't as readily infect other cultivars of grape. So, you know, everyone hears about like Chardonnay, which is a big vinifera, which is why people drink that, right. Of course, everyone knows that one. And that one can't be infected by the wild grape, because it's a pure vinifera. And so, you know, right there, in my mind, it's like, okay, so maybe that clade is not as impactful. How important is it? And I don't, I don't know. It's interesting. I think this is going to be, if people have the funding for it, it'll be a lot of future studies, my I got funded for a NIFA predoc fellowship to actually look at the effector profile of these three clades. And so that's in the works right now. We did the infection on one single host, and we're looking to see how do they compare, and it'll be interesting to see between, you know, the one we know is pretty aggressive, versus the very host specific. Versus one that's kind of an intermediate but shows to be more aggressive but doesn't exist in other places. So I think it'll be pretty exciting if it works out. Hopefully science works out for us here and get to see like because in other places they, again, they don't have all three of these, and so they haven't been able to do as much research because they don't have access to the isolates.
Jordan Ruggieri 14:23
That's really interesting. It's cool to also hear, hear the, I don't know’s, right? I think that's, that's a cool part of science as well, right. And just, hey, this is something, we, we think there might be something here, but we're, you know, we're looking and obviously there's some, like, like you said, with the wild grapes, like, if there's some differences, right. Just depends on the grapes that are, that are growing, or what you're what you're utilizing. Can we talk a little bit about your publication that was just recently put out on APS? Can you talk a little bit about what you were looking at there, and maybe some of the results?
Lexi Heger 14:55
So this paper was going back into the three cryptic species or clades. I'll stick with one word of cryptic species for now, of P. viticola. We wanted to see against baseline, can we differentiate them using a tool and then go from there. During actually, the process of this another study published using a different loci. So we used a mitochondrial loci in this study. Mitochondria usually helps us be more specific, whereas ITS or ribosomal, which is the other loci, it can be a little less. We might have increased sensitivity, but we might lose some specificity there, which is a really, I know with qPCR, that's huge trade off, right. And so something that's really important to think about in my paper, we focused on also making this a multiplex. And trying to eliminate maybe having multiple primers, maybe just having one primer set and then three probes. So we wanted it to be simple, it never is, but we wanted it to be simple and to be able to clearly differentiate these. The focus, you know, in the beginning, was really, okay, can we also make this quantitative in terms of, like, can we accurately determine how many spores or something like, in in that same vein. There were some difficulties when we got into this, when we got into the mitochondrial loci, there was just some development problems in terms of, you know, trying to make these all three work together. It was a low GC content, and so then we had some problems. It still did effectively work. We found that two of our probes were sensitive to a level that in pathology we deem appropriate. The goal of this was really to track things throughout the season, and so we kind of did a preliminary study using data from another chapter of mine with the air sampling. We didn't realize we had multiple clades, actually, so it's really cool. In my vineyard site, we didn't realize we had two of the clades. We thought, because every time I sampled, we only got clade aestivalis, but we actually had clade aestivalis and riparia, because riparia isn't as aggressive, right. And so it wasn't colonizing the same way. So it was really cool to use this very specific tool and be like, “Oh, wait, we can actually detect and see the fluctuations throughout the season.” Which I think was, you know, amidst the troubleshooting, that was actually really exciting to see that this can work. And although there are limitations, we can still get a general idea of how much is present. And then we wanted to enter the world of dPCR. I was the first one, so I got thrown into the fire, but it was a cool fire. I learned a lot through this. When I went to write my discussion, I was like, “Okay, you know, maybe this my assay design wasn't perfect for dPCR because of these problems I had prior to it in terms of troubleshooting and, you know, the high, the lower efficiency because of the loci and such.” But you can really see the utility of it with I was looking at, again, kind of the rare alleles a little bit, or just very like specific SNPs, and so I was able to see those changes. And I think between two of the assays that were the best in qPCR, you saw that translated to dPCR. And now, you know, as we go further, I think about how this could be used in plant pathology, and I think in the general sense, qPCR is our starting point. Because, you know, if we're just tracking general, quick testing for pathogens, but I think when we get into fungicide resistances, single allele changes, I think that's where dPCR is really going to come in handy with plant pathology. And I think it has a big future there and it's interesting to see. I think diagnostic clinics, like plant diagnostic clinics, are integrating it. It's being picked up, it's just going to take some time, because I think we are used to qPCR, and so I think it'll be interesting to see how plant pathologists with, they integrate not only basic research, but also very applied research into the digital PCR machine.
Jordan Ruggieri 18:50
That's really cool to hear, too. I mean, one of the trends that we see with a lot of guests here on Absolute Gene-ius is it's not always one or the other, right? It's both have their use cases. Both have their strengths. And like you said, qPCR is great as a kind of starting point and looking at, kind of some of the basic quantifications, but as you need that deeper layer, that's where digital PCR can really, you know, come into play. Do you see that as well? It's not necessarily one or the other or even this over, let's say sequencing, right? Like there's multiple tools here that can be used just based on the question you're trying to answer?
Lexi Heger 19:28
Yeah, that's a great point. Um, with sequencing, you know the time needed to get those results back, especially when we're working with growers. We can run X amount of sample in a 96-well plate and qPCR really quickly, relative to sequencing. And so if we're looking for fungicide resistance. We'd love to say, “We can get those results back to you within a few days.” But even then, compared to sequencing, you are going to be a lot faster and interpreting that result you see one line come up, okay, that's your problem. Like it's positive for this resistance, you can kind of interpret that quickly. Okay, and looking at the literature for dPCR, back when I was working on this paper, it seemed like there's a lot more viral papers for dPCR. Viral load was one, a big one, and bacteria. So, I don't know, other than you know, we think about titer with that. So maybe that's part of why that's really focused on, and also, human pathogens are bacterial and viral more commonly, I guess, in terms of the big ones I think about, but the fungal ones are still growing. But a lot of times, or, sorry, like there's, there's more and more for dPCR, but a lot of times it's looking more specifically at, you know, different clades, or these different very closely related species, or, again, fungicide resistance. And so I think it's going to continue developing, or maybe it will be a mix, or it will focus. We suggested, you know, you should maybe use qPCR first for what this is when you're doing general detection of the pathogen, not necessarily a clade, just pathogen detection. If you want really sensitive, you could also integrate that to dPCR, but for what we need, qPCR is enough for that. When you get down to this kind of thing where you're differentiating between low concentrations of mixed samples of different species or clades, that's where you kind of want to start bringing in the big guns with dPCR. And I think that's something that people will continue to do, and even maybe things that are really like pathogens, where they like knowing it's there, just even a little bit like with that kind of stuff, that's where they'll bring that in.
Jordan Ruggieri 21:31
What do you think are next steps for this research, but also in the field, right? Is there, is there any trends that are coming down, or anything that's like, you know, hey, if I, if I had five more years, you know, like, what, what are kind of the new things, or the things you know, to that are coming down in the future?
Lexi Heger 21:51
So I think with this system specifically, so if I again, all my chapters are kind of bouncing all over. But if I think about this one specifically, honestly, it was nice that my, my pre-doc that I was awarded lets me kind of go to that one of those next steps that we naturally started to think about and comparing. So I use this assay, actually, a lot when prepping for that, because I want to make sure I had the clades, the clades that I wanted to test. I had those, and I kept sampling, you know, you it's nice to just be able to run that quickly and say, “Oh, this, this, this, this, this, and this.” And I think also one with this system, again, with the P. viticola is doing like population genetics to see these, these species worldwide, or even just in the United States. We haven't done a large population genetic study looking at where the clades are-- very like well sampled either. So I think it'd be interesting to kind of go further into that and look into why are they different? How are they different? Even within the same clade or cryptic species. How genetically diverse are they within locations? We don't have downy mildew out in California, really at all. And so you know that one kind of gets missed, but that would be really interesting. If it did spread over there, you know how different it would have to be genetically to survive out there. So I think there's a lot of interesting work that can be done on this system, specifically, especially knowing that it's an obligate and obligates are a fun time genetically. There's just the host specificity and such. There's so much more to go in there. Just people often have resisted it because of the obligate nature. It's a pain, right. It's a pain, so people avoid it.
Lisa Crawford 23:24
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Jordan Ruggieri 23:43
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Lisa Crawford 24:18
And now back to our guest.
Lisa Crawford 24:23
Okay, back on track here. Career corner, yeah. We just love to talk a little bit more about your journey and how you ended up, you know, in this field. And I know you touched on it a little bit, but I'd love to get a little bit more in depth. And something that I wrote down from the very beginning was you said that you've always loved plants. And I was just curious, what is it about plants? Because I know, you know, when we're all growing up, especially, you know, me, I was really into animals, and I think that's a pretty common thing. So what was it about plants that kind of pulled you in that direction, even when you were younger?
Lexi Heger 24:56
I think when I was young, you know, honestly, I wrote my college entrance essay about this. It was talking about how, I think at that point, really, that was a really simple mindset. And it was, you know, I can come home from school, have a hard day at school, whatever. You go out to my garden that I have, that I’ve grown from seed or whatever, and you see, like, some of the plants are kind of sad, right, or it's messy out there because, you know, you hadn't been out in a few days, whatever. But you could go water the wilted tomatoes, and they'd bounce right back within, what, 30 minutes. And it's just like, I think, at that point in my childhood, it was kind of, you have some control over something that is, you don't fully understand it. And it was also something I enjoyed that was pretty and you could produce something from it. And it brought not only me joy, but I brought like, you know, I remember giving friends and family members sunflowers that I had, like, grown. And it was just like, getting to try and, like, connect on that. And then you meet so many different people through that too. And, you know, just, and I think it just fascinated me. I think that's just kind of a cool world that is so at that point to me, was so untouched, and it also brought me, just brought me joy, like foundationally, brought me joy. And I would hang out there with my dog, and he would lay in the sun. I would tidy everything up, and at the end of the day, you're like, okay, I feel so much better now. It's kind of cool to see how the full circle came about.
Lisa Crawford 26:14
That's awesome. I mean, I think not a lot of people get the opportunity to delve into what they're passionate about at such a scale and make it their life, right. So I think that's really cool that you're able to do that. Throughout your educational journey in your career, have there been mentors that kind of helped you really cultivate - pun intended - your love for, are there any moments that you kind of look back on and you say, “OH, yeah, that was really like a moment that kind of set me on this path?”
Lexi Heger 26:43
So I focused on, like, my PhD, I wanted, like, diverse experiences. I did a internship with 4-H but it wasn't necessarily related to plant science at all. I just wanted to get into 4-H to learn. And I had a mentor there who went to my or lived like, from my hometown, and so she took a chance on me to throw me into this world of extension and 4-H. I learned so much about independence and the grit of people in agriculture, and I respected it a lot. And I think at some in some way, that fueled me into where I am now, in terms of the respect I have for scientists and for farmers and growers and all these people that I think that sometimes the common public doesn't realize exists. And so there was a combination there where this person took a chance on me and let me see this world, because she realized that if I could see it, then I could hopefully do something with that. And you know, I knew I wanted to be a scientist in terms and not necessarily work with 4-H but I think they all kind of connect, and now I have a respect for that where I didn't have before. I also was an ambassador in my college at Ohio State for the Ag college. And I think that experience also, while these are not necessarily directly related to research, I think they taught me how to be curious. And that is so important in science, like, once your curiosity dies, like, what are you doing, right? And so and that, and it does happen, right. We get burnt out. And I think having really cool support systems of people, again, in very diverse fields, of Ag, or, you know, forestry, or just so many things, is just helped me get to where I am and have a really diverse perspective that I definitely lacked when I was younger.
Lisa Crawford 28:32
You've touched a little bit already on diversity and kind of keeping I mean, I guess it would depend on what you're going into, but this idea of, like, leaving yourself open for diversity in what you're looking at, and then also this structure and surrounding yourself with people who support what you're doing. So, I mean, is there anything else specific that you would just say to someone who maybe wants to go into the field that you're in?
Lexi Heger 28:56
It's definitely like having support, right, that is for sure. And you know, going into this specific field, I guess, is a harder question, because honestly, I think it would generalize across any field, especially maybe plant sciences or agriculture is, you know, yes, be open to trying different things, but also try to realize why you're doing it. I think sometimes, you know, especially at this point where things are hard. I'm trying to write. Ideas aren't flowing, or I'm frustrated, right. It's okay. What, why are we doing all this? Can we get to the next step? And I think a lot of times, you know, on a very practical level, it's important for people wanting to get into higher level research. It's important to think, “Okay, are you going to get where you need to get by doing these degrees, or by doing this.” Like, make sure you remember even just like, once you get into the actual projects, you know you need to remember what the point of them is. You need, like, to determine what tools you're going to use, what the end goal is, and you need to remember it. I think, like, we forget why we're doing things, and then we just get so bogged down. And I think it's sometimes really helpful just to pull yourself back out and say, “Okay, where am I going from here? And am I on the right path? If not, do we need to change again and redirect and think about it in that way?”
Lisa Crawford 30:12
Yep, that makes perfect sense. It's easy to get down into the weeds.
Lexi Heger 30:15
I use that line too often, but that's another good pun. You're, oh my gosh. Morgan's mom, my husband's mom, loves puns. She's going to love this. You keep one of these in here. She's going to love your puns.
Lisa Crawford 30:26
The inspiration is just flowing today. Yeah, I just have one more question, and it's kind of a random question, but I was curious, do you have a favorite pathogen?
Lexi Heger 30:34
I kind of love downy mildew, like, it's a part of who I am now. Like, I honestly think I'm more of a favorite plant, but also I don't, because I have, like, a list of 12 different favorite plants. But for my wedding bouquet, it was a Hosta, like I had, we made Hostas go on to my wedding bouquet. So favorite pathogen is probably just going to be the one I work on. But because I actually, like, I have to. So I don't know that I actually have one in terms like, “Ooh, this was really cool to learn about.” There's some cool ones that like infect, that are just fungal pathogens that infect, like ants. So it's like, the, it's like the one from The Last of Us, where, like, it controls their mind, and so, like, that's where they took it, right. But I don't know if I actually have a favorite, but maybe that makes me kind, of kind of lame, but I think it would be the one I study.
Lisa Crawford 31:15
You talked about how gardening kind of got you into the whole world of plants, and how it was an escape for you and just a really nice way for you to spend your time and connect with nature. And I wonder, now that you spend all of your time just really deep into the plant world, does gardening still hold the same escape for you? Or are you starting to feel a little bit less connected to it than you were, just because of how much time you spend on plants?
Lexi Heger 31:40
I honestly don't get to garden right now, because I live in an apartment and we did a little bit, but it's not the same. Grad school I lived in an apartment, had a small balcony, and then we just moved to a rental house, and my husband also loves growing everything. So not, if I started to lose it, Morgan would bring it back. I do want to have a big garden. I talk about all the cool gardens I want to have. I want to have a Hosta garden. I want to have a hydrangea garden. I want to have big garden of all these different tomatoes, right. So I think it's still there. I just need to; I need to find it in terms of actually get to do it again. So, yeah, I haven't lost it. It is a lot more driven by science now than when I was 13. And also sometimes with the pathology side, sometimes you'll get, or even insects, like I had, we grew some kale this semester, or this year, and we came back from a trip and it was covered in bugs, right. And I was like, “No, we're just getting rid of this. I know what this takes to fix this problem, and it's the end of September. I'm not fixing this, no.” So I think you start to have, like, those tradeoffs more now and, but this fruits, like, the fruits of your labor, are actually still as is still as exciting.
Lisa Crawford 32:57
Well I feel like on some level too, it gives you a greater appreciation and like, a new way, because you understand so deeply how it works now and everything that has to happen in order for these plants to grow and thrive.
Jordan Ruggieri 33:09
I try. I tried. I'm horrible at any plant stuff. I would love to do it, but I tried to grow a green tea tree, and I didn't start because it takes like five years or something from the from a seed, right. So I started from, from like, a three-year-old plant that I, that I bought, and they're not very big, because it takes a long time for them to grow. I mean, it was, I could sit it on my windowsill. It wasn't very big at all. And I got, like, six months in. I was so excited. I was seeing new leaves come off. And I was like, all right, couple years I'm going to be able to, you know, take the leaf buds and make my own tea. And then I accidentally left it outside in the summer and it was on the hottest day of the year, it was 116 Fahrenheit, and I just forgot. I just, you know, I got ready for work. I left for work, and that was it. And I came back and it looked like I set it on fire. Like, literally, it was black and charred.
Lexi Heger 34:04
That's amazing, though, I think that's it's so relatable. I kill things all the time. Like, I want to, I want to propagate cool things, and then I forget about them because I've got 90 other things to do. And so I That's why, like, I like growing things outside too. Like, it's different when you have rain and just soil so much better than growing things and you need to touch them every single day.
Jordan Ruggieri 34:27
And here's me never growing anything you know day in my life, and I'm going to take something that's so sensitive that, like tea.
Lexi Heger 34:35
That was a bold choice.
Jordan Ruggieri 34:37
I can do it, it's fine. We live in California. You can grow everything here. I've killed cactuses too.
Lexi Heger 34:39
I also have killed cactuses. Yeah, it's not. I grew a cactus from seed in AP Bio my junior year, and that thing, still alive.
Jordan Ruggieri 34:52
Oh, nice.
Lexi Heger 34:53
That's my one testament as a horticulturist.
Jordan Ruggieri 34:57
Well, Lexi, thank you so much for joining us on today's episode of Absolute Gene-ius, we are thrilled to talk to you. We're thrilled with your stories. You were an unbe-leaf-able guest. We enjoyed every minute. You can push off a cliff you want. That's totally fine but thank you so much. Really appreciate your time.
Lexi Heger 35:17
Thank you so much.
Jordan Ruggieri 35:20
That was Lexi Hager, PhD candidate in Michigan State University's Department of Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences. Thanks for joining us today for the first in an amazing slate of gene-iuses that we have lined up for you this season. Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss a single conversation. Stay curious, and we'll see you next time. This episode of Absolute Gene-ius was produced by Sarah Briganti, Matt Ferris and Matthew Stock.
Lisa Crawford 35:46
Don't make me say plant punster one more. This is a tongue twister.
Jordan Ruggieri 35:53
I'm rooting for you.