Many commonly utilized molecular biology techniques were used throughout the course, including restriction enzyme digests, DNA ligation, PCR, DNA gel electrophoresis, bacterial transformation, bacterial lysis, protein purification, protein gel electrophoresis, and western blotting. Utilizing these techniques the high school students spliced a GFP gene into a plasmid vector, confirmed the successful ligation using PCR, transformed the vector into Ecoli to express the protein and performed western blot analysis of bacterial lysates to confirm the presence of the GFP protein. The highlight of the course was the induction of the GFP gene in bacterial colonies causing them to glow green under UV light.
The course was developed and run by 15 WCGSMS graduate students who developed and tested the curriculum and then presented the lectures and ran the labs for the high school students.
Funding for this course was generously provided by a grant from the Washington Mutual Foundation.
