BioEyes

I love going to Stanley Clark School. The first and second graders are always so excited about the fish, and have prepared lots of “wonderments”. These are questions that they have written down about the fish, and we get to talk about them together. Some of these questions are correctly answered by other students in the class. Some I may be able to answer, and some we will be able to answer as the week progresses and we get to observe the embryos growing. We talk about how scientists do the same things-they come up with questions that they are interested in, and then go about finding out the answers-sometimes by reading about “it” in a book or on line. They might ask another friend or scientist to see if they know the answer. They may actually “do” an experiment to find out the answer. The joy of learning is palpable in the room, and we have a great time exploring zebrafish together! Here are some hard working first and second graders (along with their teachers) studying the fish.

This past Saturday (Feb 4, 2012), I volunteered to help NDeRC with the BioEyes exhibit at Science Alive. This took place at the South Bend downtown library, and I believe this was the event’s 20th year.

More info on Science Alive (a local community event that features several exhibitors for K-12 students)…read

http://www.wsbt.com/news/sbt-handson-science-draws-thousands-20120204,0,6787142.story

http://sjcpl.lib.in.us/sciencealive/

A couple of NDeRC pictures (Bioeyes and Nano) was on the WSBT website. Check out Pics #2 and #5 of the online photo gallery.

http://www.wsbt.com/news/sbt-photos-science-alive-20120204,0,1703947.photogallery

There were so many students and families that attended…that the traffic to every exhibit was constant.

The BioEyes exhibit was ran by Anita Beebe, myself, and Manuela Lahn (a postdoc in ND Hyde’s zebrafish lab).

We had 3 stations of microscopes showing embryos that were 5 days, 3 days, and few hours old. Anita also set up a video on her laptop that showed the first 24 hours of embryo development. There was also a tank of glow fish, and the visitors were allowed to shine a black light on the fish to make them glo.

Some of the visitors never seen the zebrafish larvae/embryos, while others were former students and teachers that went through BioEyes at their schools.

Who says that the week before Christmas can’t be a good time for students to learn? Mrs. Karban’s 8th graders were very attentive to the zebrafish they worked with the week of December 19-23. They were just beginning to learn about genetics- a perfect time to perform a genetic’s cross between striped (wildtype) zebrafish and albino zebrafish. Friday-the day before Christmas Eve- the students quickly arrived to the classroom passing out the occasional gift to a friend, but then jumped right into grabbing their petri dish of zebrafish embryos, positioned them under their microscopes, and began their observations. I was very impressed!
Mrs. Karban plans on having the students analyze data after Christmas break, displaying the student’s results in a bulletin board. I hope to get a picture of upload the results soon. Here are some pictures.

This past weekend, I attended the Celebrate Science Indiana event at the state fair grounds in Indianapolis. The event included several science presenters (i.e., universities, agencies, etc) that each had a booth for their exhibit. NDeRC had a booth, along with the ND chemistry/physics department. We brought Bioeyes, NANO, and GENO. I ran the GENO exhibit, displaying several petri dishes of fluorescent bacteria (in protective glass of course). The students could shine the black lights across the petri dishes to view the fluorescence. I also had a poster that explained the gene cloning techinique.

I felt that most of the attendees that came to our ND exhibit were middle schoolers or younger (all the way down to 4 year olds). There were some high school and college visitors as well. It was definitely quite an experience to share the GENO project with not only the students, but with their parents and teachers. I met a couple scientists from different companies that had worked with GFP (green fluorescent protein) in the past. I even met one older scientist who use to catch Jellyfish so many years ago for the GFP protein.

I was able to share this project with others at so many levels. For example, a high school student or even a middle schooler may have understood the DNA, vector and transformations. They had some background in DNA genetics (or the expression of genetic traits). But, for the small children, we mainly talked about the comparison between GFP fluorescence and jellyfish bio-luminescence.

It was a long day (9am-5pm for me), but I am glad I was able to be a part of it. I did feel that the turnout for this free public event in Indianapolis was not as high as it could of been (being a metropolitan area). But, maybe next year, the event would definitely grow more.

I recently received a request from a group at Flickr called “zebrafish” asking if I might share this beautiful photo with their Flickr group. I have never received such a request before, but after observing the other 110 photos at the site and seeing the different sources that have also shared (Sive Lab, from Whitehead Institute at Cambridge; Center for Image in Science and Art Project from the University of Lisbon; Dr. Albert Pan for Olympus Bioscapes Photo Contest), I felt very honored to share this photo taken by a student in Mrs. Harkin’s biology class at Mishawaka High School. What an honor! I am letting Mrs. Harkins know that she has a budding professional photographer in her class! Here is the flickr group zebrafish

Original note with picture: The sunlight was shining through the window onto the microscope stage where both albino and wildtype zebrafish embryos were being observed. The students wanted to show me how shiny and reflective they looked with this natural lighting-so cool! One of the students took this picture for me.

I just finished my first week of BioEYES this school year, and participated in 4 8th grade classes with Mrs. Tipton, and one 5th grade class with Mr. Zook. It was great being back with the students, and the excitement of the beginning of the school year was still present. Students were introduced to genetics by performing the experiment of crossing striped zebrafish with albino zebrafish. By the end of the week, they discovered that all of the babies were ………. I can’t give it away just in case some future students find their was to my blog!
Here are some pictures and a video of some of the week’s activities:

pictures

movie

For the past year or more I had been wanting to record via picture and video all of the equipment that gets unpacked and packed back up every week for BioEYES, but I am always under the pressure of being somewhere when I have the equipment and van. This past week I needed to check some of the equipment over before the start of the school year, so I was able to accomplish it.
Here is a picture of the equipment that goes out to the classrooms that participate in BioEYES. We are so grateful to have a van with a lift!

Here is a video walking through the supplies a bit.

John G. joined the lab a few weeks ago to work out the whole-mount immunolabeling of our wild-type and mutant fish. Thus far, we have had problems with too much fluorescent background, mixed with our specific signals. We see the dopaminergic cells, but we also see everything else in red color (although dimmer than the color in the dopaminergic cells).

So, I decided to make some cross-sections of fixed embryos/larvae, to see if the fluorescent labeling method would be better. The problem with sectioning is that the embryos/larvae are so small. You have to position them just right to get good orientation in sectioning. But, if you section enough, you will get a few really good sections. John G. did the immunolabeling of the cross-sections.

Here are images of the tyrosine-hydroxylase labeling of the dopaminergic cells in 3 day old larvae (green fluorescent color).

These are normal (non-mutant) fish. The signal is clearer, and there is minimal background. Note the labeling in the eyes and brain (area between eyes), and some cell axons. The cells bodies are bright green. Depending on the cross-section, you will get good orientation of the retina in the eye (with lens). Not every cross-section is good.
I sectined ~15-20 larvae to get these pics. (I put about 10 larvae in an ice block, and section all of them at the same time…takes me about 15 min per block).

….so it’s Day 5 of Bioeyes (the last day), and the teachers are now filling out the surveys. I don’t have a survey, so I am secretly blogging at one of the computers….

I think it has been a good week. Today, the teachers saw their GFP paintings. Everyone’s worked except for one, which was probably due to painting with a negative colony (non-GFP).

So, all the supplies are going back to the Jordan stock room until the late summer. But, during the summer the Bio-grad fellows are going to think about how to make the GENO lab more efficient in the classroom. We got a couple new ideas, such as making pre-and post-quizzes.

This idea was suggeset by John Gensic who uses google apps often for students to take quizzes and tests on the computer. He then can see how the students answered on each question, and identify the problem areas. This week, we got a chance to witness this process when the Bioeyes teachers had to do a 10-question pre and post quiz for the modern lab. The post quiz definitely showed that the teachers now understood some of the vocabulary and techniques for the lab, and we could identify the topics that still needed attention during our discussion.

Imagine how this tool would be so useful in the high schools! Since we are only in the school for 5-7 days, we are sometimes not sure if all the students grasped the concepts. We do give them a quiz at the end (paper copy), and go over the questions. But, the computer method may be a good way to collect “data,” on what was learned…and to also have instant grading (not checking things off with a red marker during the class time).

ok…it’s time for lunch:-) i’ll be back later to blog!

It was Day 4 of the modern lab for the bioeyes institute.

The teachers got to see their transformations from yesterday. 3 groups had GFP bacteria, but there was so much growth that the whole agar plate looked green! So, I brought in one of my control plates, and had them pick a GFP colony to make the paint for their paintings. We’ll see the works of art tomorrow!!!

Also, Francis had a good idea today for the teachers to look up GFP in the news (using google search). They then had to blog about it. I’m going to try to maybe do this myself this week…and learn about some new techniques using GFP. This will also be a great exercise for the high school students too…i.e., they could do their own search or we can pick out articles for them to read. (note that these are news articles versus scientific journal publications).