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

Learning• The DNA Learning Center's Curriculum

Study program was founded in 1985 and remains the nation's oldest and largest coordinated effort in the country to bring molecular biology and recombinant-DNA technology into the science classroom. This novel institution arose out of the close collaboration between Long Island school districts and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Curriculum Study member schools and districts have preferred access to the DNA Learning Center. Members select from a "menu" of benefits and services -- including lab field trips, summer workshops, seminars by world class scientists, and teacher inservice training.

Middle School Participants include

:Rockville Centre Union Free School District •Jericho Union Free School District •Locust Valley Central School District •Syosset Central School District •Half Hollow Hills Central School District •South Huntington Union Free School District •Queens Community School District 29 •Lawrence Union Free School District •Garden City Public Schools •Plainedge Union Free School District •Elwood Union Free School District •Cold Spring Harbor Central School District •East Meadow Union Free School District •Harborfields Central School District •Port Washington Union Free School District •Bethpage Union Free School District •Massapequa Union Free School District •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: equipment-sharing 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

GENETIC FUNDAMENTALSMiddle School Student Field Trips to the Bio2000 Teaching LaboratoryThe 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 InheritanceFruit 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 MutationsOnion 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

Education at

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

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 genomeDrosophila 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 DrosophilaDrosophila 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 EcoliWe 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.

Andrew Gulino 

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, studentsobserved 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