Chris Carlson is a PhD student in the lab of David Morgan at the University of California in San Francisco. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Chris became fascinated by the question of how coronaviruses package their large RNA genomes. Together with his collaborators, he began a 2-year exploration of this problem that led to the current paper. He is graduating soon and will move on to a position at Orbital Therapeutics, with the goal of developing the next generation of RNA delivery therapeutics. twitter: @chris_carlson_

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