EXTRATERRESTRIAL GARDENING—Local botany student Christina Johnson has sent plant seeds into space on the shuttle Discovery. The plants, that grew in dark, airtight containers, are now back on Earth, ready for her and others to study the effects of low gravity on their growth. Not everyone can send a first love into orbit.

Growing up in Thousand Oaks with two dozen fruit trees in her backyard, Christina Johnson developed a particular fondness for plants.

In an experiment to further her education and learn how plants are affected by low gravity, hundreds of her seeds were aboard the space shuttle Discovery that landed on April 20.

Johnson planted 40 seeds inside each of 13 petri dishes about 2 inches in diameter. The dishes were placed in water and then in air-tight containers. Half the plants rode in the crew’s quarters on the shuttle and the other half were kept on earth at the Kennedy Space Center for comparison.

All of the samples had to grow in darkness.

The 2000 Westlake High School graduate is working with NASA toward a doctorate in botany from Miami University, Ohio. After earning her associate degree from Moorpark College in 2005, Johnson graduated from UC Berkley with a bachelor of science in genetics and plant biology. She’s vice president of the student association of the American Society for Gravitational and Space Biology and the president of the Department of Botany Miami University Graduate Student Association.

Johnson said she enjoys studying plants, especially how they are affected by low gravity.

“There is so much to be learned about the expression of genes in gravity perception, and a spaceflight experiment is just the kind of opportunity that I sought when I chose Miami for graduate school.”

She couldn’t have known beforehand what it would mean to work with NASA.

“It’s pretty crazy working on such a tight time schedule for a spaceflight study.”

In an academic setting, Johnson would have had years to prepare for such a study. With NASA, she had months. She learned in January she was chosen, and her plants launched in March.

She prepared the samples for spaceflight and hand-carried some of them back to college to study the results.

“When the semester began, I knew there might be a lot of travel ahead, but I didn’t realize how challenging it would be to spend the better part of two months in Florida.”

Now that her plants, which she calls “precious samples,” are back from space, the work is far from over.

Upon first inspection, Johnson saw the plants that went up on the shuttle had grown in a tangled mess. Some stems were pointed down, some roots were pointed up and some were sideways.

“I’ll be drowning in data analysis for at least a year, if not three,” she said.

Still, when Johnson’s finished with this project, she plans to apply to another NASA project.

“There are a couple that have grabbed my attention, still working with plants, of course.”

When Johnson earns her PhD, she plans to continue in space biology as a teacher with a lab at a small university.