Are High School Students Ready for Recombinant DNA? The UOP Experience Michael J. Mlnch University of the Pacific, Stockton. CA 95211
College professors usually think in terms of a hierarchy of academic topics, with all the courses in the curriculum arranged in order as on a ladder, each preceded by prerequisites, each leading on to more advanced material. Biochemistry and molecular hiology are generally regarded as advanced topics, reserved for college juniors and seniors. Therefore i t was with a certain feeling of daring that we decided, four years ago, to offer athree-week summer honors course on recomhinant DNA for talented high school students between their junior and senior years.Not a scaleddown freshman biology course, but a real two-unit (but tuition-free) college-level course complete with three written exams, afternoon laboratories six days a week, a lihrary research paper, a field trip, and student panel discussions on assigned hioethics topics. We are pleased with our experiment! I t was and has continued to be a unique opportunity t o focus on advanced material of great interest to many potential scientists, and i t has intellectually stretched even the most gifted particiants.' All ~articipantsare required to live in campus housing for the three aeeks, so that the program involves nearly total immersion in the topic of recomhinant DNA. For most of them i t was a first opportunity to experience the excitement of advanced laboratory and course work. Valuable skills are developed, which will be important to their future success as college students and eventually as scientists. Our Success
We have been successful in offering such advanced material for several reasons. We have ver; good students with a high level of motivation and interest in the subject. Student participants are selected according to their scientific background and interests, past academic performance, writing ability and social maturity as gauged by a student essay on an assigned topic, their academic record (GPA, PSAT, or SAT scores) and letters of recommendation from high school science teachers and advisors. We look for high standards of oerformance but no soecific numerical criterion is used. ~ i student ~ hinterest and potential often offset a few lower for students from disadvantaged backerades.. esoeciallv grounds. We are committed, as is our university, in assisting minority students, women, and the handicapped in their pursuit of scientific careers. There have been about equal numbers of male and female participants the last three years. Genetic engineering is a topic of immense practical and social imoortance. and it will have an imoact on most students aniicipating careers in biology, biochemistry, or medicine. Practical eene s ~ l i c i"n edates from the middle 1970's and is a topic too recent to he given much coverage in most high school chemistry and biology courses. Yet it is too important to be ignored, especially in California, which hosts nearly a third of the industries using hiotechnology. Students appreciate the possibility that recombinant DNA may be as significant a technical advance as steam power or electricity and may lead to a new industrial revolution. The topic nicely integrates the information gained in ~~~
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Journal of Chemical Education
high-school-level chemistry and hiology; we endeavor to connect these two disciolines that are often presented as worlds a p a r t b i o l o g y as descriptive and qualiiative, chemistry as analytical and q u a n t i t a t i ~ eBiological .~ events can be made interesting to those interested primarily in chemistry and neither discipline has an edge on sophisticated reasoning. Because little or no advanced mathematics is required, molecular bioloev offers examples of so~histicatedscientific argumentation &cessible to many whb have not yet been exposed to enough mathematics to follow high-level arguments in other disciplines. The Course
The lecture course covers nucleic acid and protein structure. the eenetic code. the reeulation of eene exoression. " restriction enzymes and other enzymes used in recombinant DNA research, cloning with plasmid and virus vectors, genetic diseases, and the social responsibilities of the genetic eneineer. The aoplicatiou of these methods to cancer and AIDS research a i d to agricultural problems is stressed. Most of a popular college textbook (Watson, Tooze, and Kurz, Recombinant DNA) and three recent Scientific American offprints are assigned reading. Student performance is evaluated by three writing exams, an optional oral final exam, and two drafts of a library research paper on a bioethics topic. This affords the opportunity to stress the ethical and social obligations of scientists, which is a strong feature of our program. Each student is assigned an individual ethics question related t o genetic engineering or the impact of science and technology on society. Students are expected to prepare a lengthy lihrary research paper on their topics, with a first draft due by the beginning of the second week. These are evaluated for scientific content by a scientist and for style, logical consistency, and philosophical sophistication by two professors of philosophy. Students then write a revised version of their paper, incorooratine sueeestions and new information. The last event'of the ihreerweek program is a series of panel discussions in which students defend the oositions thev took in their papers before fellow students and faculty guests. They are expected to field questions from the audience. The "project-oriented" laboratory allows students t o progress through a series of experiments, illustrating the points brought out in lecture. Working in the laboratory every afternoon for three weeks, students isolate and purify an enzyme, grow bacteria (E. coli), isolate bacterial DNA, purify and characterize i t by agarose gel electrophoresis, insert a plasmid (pBR322) into E. coli, select for plasmid containing clones by ampicillin selection, amplify their copy number with chloramphenicol, grow a large scale culture and harvest, and purify and finally characterize the recovered plas-
' Next summer accommodate 25 DarticiDants for a .. . w e- alan to ~-~~~~ three-week period starling June 19. 1989. ~eadersirierested in fdher aelails are invite0 lo sen0 thelr inquiries to the alhor. Kornberg. A. Biochemrstry 1987, 26. 6888-6891
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mid with a restriction digest map. The skills developed in this laboratory include the use of sterile techniques, the handling of micro quantities, and the use of control experiments. This experience is designed to increase the ahility of student participants to work independently in a laboratory, to make reproducible quantitative measurements, and to design controlled experiments that clearly test hypotheses.
Because the recombinant DNA molecules prepared in this laboratory are created within hosts that exchange genetic material naturally, they are exempt from the NIH Guidelines on Recombinant DNA Research. However, in order to acquaint young people with these protocols and the rationale behind them, we follow recommended protocols in every case.
Volume 66
Number 1 January 1989
85
