Story Photos
 Clatskanie High School seniors, from left, Austin Carmack, Danny Somes and Chad Sutfin study a blue gel to see if DNA indicators are visible during a science workshop Saturday at Lower Columbia College. Greg Ebersole / The Daily News
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LCC professors introduce prep students to modifying genetics
Sunday, December 14, 2008 12:15 PM PST
By Cheryll A. Borgaard
Printable version
E-mail this articleLike mad scientists, kids added a pinch of this, a drop of that to change the make-up of a teeny, tiny glob of bacteria at a science workshop Saturday at Lower Columbia College.
“Ooh, this is so cool,” gushed Katherine Jolma, a Clatskanie junior, as she shined a black light into a round dish, making the tiny circles glow green. “That’s the one that took the gene.”
Jolma, along with 25 other high school students from Wahkiakum, Toutle Lake, Clatskanie and R.A. Long high schools, learned about DNA and its role in genetically-modified organisms — or GMOs — from LCC’s science staff.
The day-long event was one of LCC’s “Science Fiction Becomes Science Fact” worskshops designed to encourage high school students’ interest in science.
Currently, the most familiar usage of GMOs is in agriculture, where scientists are experimenting with “super corn” and other genetically enhanced foods.
In the local workshop, students carried out experiments in which they altered bacteria.
Using four different dishes, students were instructed to retrieve blobs of E.coli bacteria, and to two of them they added DNA from a green jellyfish. One of those two dishes had a special “sugar medium” called arabinose, which allows the bacteria to “read” the introduced DNA and change the E.coli’s genetic makeup.
LCC biology instructor Louis LaPierre, who led the workshop, told the teens that E.coli “is like a lab rat” — it’s great for experiments “because it’s easily manipulated and it reproduces like crazy.”
The sample without the arabinose was unchanged, but in the one with arabinose, the tiny colonies of bacteria glowed green, signaling its acceptance of the green jellyfish’s DNA.
“I think it’d be cool to work with DNA,” Jolma said. “Not necessarily as a career, but I could minor in it.”
In another hands-on task, students tested corn chips and papaya for DNA modification, using a special apparatus to do “gel electrophoresis,” a technique that separates DNA or other protein molecules using an electric current applied to a gel.
“The machine has a negative and a positive side,” Mallory Lewis, a Clatskanie senior, explained to a baffled reporter. “Since the polarity of DNA is negative, the positive charge pulled the DNA out, making an extra line in the gel that indicates it is a GMO.”
“I expect them to be turned on about science,” LaPierre said after the class, which was funded by a state grant. “That’s the whole point of this.”
Also on hand to guide the experiments were Carl Roush, also a biology instructor, and Dave Cordero of Earth Sciences.
For Jolma, the activities weren’t the only “turn-on” of the workshop. Some of the equipment was pretty exciting to use, she said.
“We got to use a micropipette to add the DNA to let it code” the corn chip test, Jolma said. “It’s just like they use on ‘CSI,’ and I felt like, ‘Yeah, I’m doing CSI!’ “
On the Web:
GMO information: www.geo-pie.cornell.edu
Pro-GMO: www.monsanto.com
Anti-GMO: www.greenpeace.org/usa/campaigns/genetic-engineering
julietorell wrote on Dec 14, 2008 11:11 AM:
mmk wrote on Dec 14, 2008 3:51 PM:
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