GENES, BIOTECHNOLOGY & THE ENVIRONMENT Summer 2007
COURSE WRAP-UP
For this 2007 edition of the course, a total of 18 high school students were enrolled from 11 high schools in southeastern Arizona. These included urban and rural public schools, charter schools, and private schools, and students ranged from freshmen to seniors. Twelve of the 18 students had participated in GBE 2006. A University of Arizona Regents' Professor (Nancy Moran), a Tucson High Magnet School teacher (Margaret Wilch), a UA biotechnology outreach instructor (Al Agellon) and two UA Dept. of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology doctoral students helped in teaching the course. An additional high school teacher participated and received graduate credit.
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The central theme of the course was the molecular characterization of the symbiotic bacteria associated with honey bee colonies. This topic is currently little studied, so the students were making new discoveries in the course of their work. The students collected bees from the USDA-ARS Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson, used these for PCR and cloning of ribosomal RNA sequences from gut bacteria, submitted their materials for DNA sequencing, and analyzed the resulting sequences using bioinformatics (BLAST and phylogenetic methods). They also analyzed bacteria derived from bee products (honey, royal jelly and bee bread) and performed experiments on antibiotic properties of bee products. These activities were integrated with learning about bee ecology, molecular biology, bioinformatics, and scientific methodology in general. Students kept lab notebooks and produced PowerPoint presentations on their findings.
The projects encompassed the fields of environmental microbiology, ecology, molecular biology, bioinformatics, evolutionary biology, and exposed students directly to discovery-based science learning.
The lab work was remarkably successful. The students produced a number of new DNA sequences from bee-assocated bacteria. These showed clear homology to previously sequenced bacteria from honey bees in a limited number of studies conducted with samples from Europe and Africa. The quality of the sequences was excellent. One group of students submitted the 16 new sequences to the National Center for Biological Information's online GenBank. The students' new results were the first sequences from the microbiota of US honey bees, and these are now available for other researchers through public databases.
The students learned the following methods: DNA extraction, PCR, PCR cleanup, cloning using TOPO vector including transformation, DNA sequencing, sequence cleanup using 4 Peaks software, sequence alignment using MacClade and ClustalW software, BLAST using GenBank, phylogenetic analysis using ClustalW and MacClade. In addition, they dissected bees, collected bees from hives and from flowers, learned basic bacterial culturing and sterile technique, and designed and executed experiments assaying antibiotic activity. They kept detailed lab notebooks and communicated their ideas in oral presentations using PowerPoint, and they learned how to deposit sequences in GenBank.