Download Students Visit DNA Learning Center

Meet the Faculty
K. Bohaman, G.Becht, R.Cammarata,P.Barkwill, E.Kannergieser, P.Theodorson, M. Dreyer, T. Swezey, J.LoGiudice
Participating School Districts
• Genetics As A Model For Whole Middle School Participants include
Learning
•
:Rockville Centre Union Free School District
The DNA Learning Center's Curriculum
•Jericho Union Free School District
Study program was founded in 1985 and
•Locust Valley Central School District
remains the nation's oldest and largest
•Syosset Central School District
coordinated effort in the country to bring
•Half Hollow Hills Central School District
molecular biology and recombinant-DNA
•South Huntington Union Free School District
technology into the science classroom.
•Queens Community School District 29
This novel institution arose out of the
•Lawrence Union Free School District
close collaboration between Long Island
•Garden City Public Schools
school districts and Cold Spring Harbor
•Plainedge Union Free School District
Laboratory. Curriculum Study member
•Elwood Union Free School District
schools and districts have preferred
•Cold Spring Harbor Central School District
access to the DNA Learning Center.
•East Meadow Union Free School District
Members select from a "menu" of
•Harborfields Central School District
benefits and services -- including lab
•Port Washington Union Free School District
field trips, summer workshops, seminars
•Bethpage Union Free School District
by world class scientists, and teacher
•Massapequa Union Free School District
inservice training.
•Wyandanch Union Free School District
•New York City Community School District 1
•Friends Academy
•Greenvale School
•East Woods School
•Old Westbury School of the Holy Child
•St. Dominics Elementary School
•
The Learning Center has
helped popularize several
useful methods for
delivering laboratory
instruction in genetics to
large numbers of precollege
students and teachers,
including: equipmentsharing consortia (1985),
the use of mobile vans to
carry instructional labs to
remote sites (1986), and
laboratory "field trips"
(1988). Its staff has
developed laboratory
teaching curricula at the
elementary, middle school,
high school, and college
levels
Education
at
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
GENETIC FUNDAMENTALS
Middle School Student Field Trips
to the Bio2000 Teaching Laboratory
The DNA Learning Center staff is proud to offer a program of middle school Genetics and
Human Genetics laboratory experiences. The interactive "hands-on" approach to learning
fosters development of creative and critical thinking skills, while increasing facility with
scientific concepts. Labs are held in the afternoon in the Learning Center's Bio2000
Teaching Laboratory. Each lab is approximately 90 minutes.
Variability and Inheritance
Fruit flies in a mixture are sorted by phenotype using a dissecting microscope. Human
traits are examined (ear lobes, widow's peak, tongue rolling) and results are shared on
the blackboard as a mini-population study.
Corn Genetics and Mendelian Inheritance
The number of pigmented vs. unpigmented kernels is compared in a 100-kernel sample
from Indian corn. Working back from the data, Punnett squares are used to determine
parental genes responsible for the observed phenotypic ratio.
Cells, Chromosomes, and Mutations
Onion epidermis and human cheek cell slides are prepared and viewed under a compound
microscope. Dividing chromosomes are compared in normal and irradiated onion root tips.
Students construct individual cell models.
DNA Structure and Recombination
DNA is extracted from E. coli cells and precipitated with alcohol to spool long strands of DNA.
A pop-bead model of a DNA molecule is assembled and then spliced together with other
models to illustrate the recombining properties of complementary DNA sequences
Drosophila Melanogaster
Drosophila melanogaster is a fruit
fly, a little insect about 3mm long,
of the kind that accumulates
around spoiled fruit. It is also one
of the most valuable of organisms
in biological research, particularly
in genetics and developmental
biology. Drosophila has been used
as a model organism for research
for almost a century, and today,
several thousand scientists are
working on many different aspects
of the fruit fly.
Drosophila Research
Lab
Why work with Drosophila?
• Part of the reason people work on it is historical - so much is
already known about it that it is easy to handle and well-understood
- and part of it is practical: it's a small animal, with a short life cycle
of just two weeks, and is cheap and easy to keep large numbers.
Mutant flies, with defects in any of several thousand genes are
available, and a project is now underway to sequence the entire
Drosophila genome.
The Drosophila genome
Drosophila has four pairs of chromosomes: the X/Y sex chromosomes and the
autosomes 2,3, and 4. The fourth chromosome is quite tiny and rarely heard from.
The size of the genome is about 165 million bases and contains and estimated
12,000 genes (by comparison, the human genome has 3,300 million bases and may
have about 70,000 genes; yeast has about 5800 genes in 13.5 million base bases).
Research on Drosophila
Drosophila is so popular, it would be almost impossible to list the number of things
that are being done with it. Originally, it was mostly used in genetics, for instance
to discover that genes were related to proteins and to study the rules of genetic
inheritance. More recently, it is used mostly in developmental biology, looking to
see how a complex organism arises from a relatively simple fertilised egg.
Embryonic development is where most of the attention is concentrated, but there
is also a great deal of interest in how various adult structures develop in the pupa,
mostly focused on the development of the compound eye, but also on the wings,
legs and other organs.
We studied mutations in fruit flies.
We were able to observe wild fruit flies and mutant fruit flies with the use of a dissecting microscope.
The wild flies had red eyes, brown bodies, and tear drop shaped wings. These traits can change in each
generation of flies due to mutations. Mutant flies can have many variations such as black eyes, curled
wings or even an extra pair of legs on their head where the antenae should be.
Melanie Jung
Using E.coli bacteria, the students extracted the DNA .
The steps included opening the nuclear pores, removing the
DNA and then collecting the DNA on glass rods. The students
were amazed to see DNA as a clear gel-like substance..
Extracting DNA from Ecoli
We used a harmless type of ecoli called ecoli mm294. Bacteria cells were used because they are simple
organisms, are unicellular, and have no nuclear membrane. Our procedures follow:
First we added 3 ml of soap to the tube containing the ecoli. Soap was added because the cell
membrane is made of lipids, proteins and carbohydrates. Soap breaks down the lipids in the cell
membrane so that the DNA will float free. After shaking the test tube until the two substances were
mixed, we put them in a hot water bath to speed up the process. Next we added alcohol on top of the
soap bacteria mixture because the alcohol is like a DNA magnet. The DNA rose to the clear section
where they were visible. We removed the strands of DNA with a glass rod. It was whitish and stringy.
Glowing Gene Lab
Museum Experience
GFP or Glowing Fluorescent Protein gene from jellyfish was
inserted into the DNA of E.coli bacteria. The newly formed DNA or
recombinant DNA now causes the bacteria to glow. Petri plates containing
growing bacteria were brought back to SSMS. Two days later, students
observed colonies of glowing bacteria which they genetically engineered.
Students explore DNA model
The Genetic Code
The Genetic Code
Would like to thank
For making this genetic experience
possible