High School South faculty member Meenakshi Bhattacharya, and students Sam Harrison and Jessica Cheng attended the month long summer workshop at the Waksman Institute at Rutgers University.
The student’s research project on the genomic analysis of the brine shrimp, included isolation, sequencing, and analysis of the genes from Artemia fanciscana. The findings will be deposited in the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), an international database for scientists.
Students learned molecular biology laboratory techniques including plasmid preparations, restriction enzyme digests, gel electrophoresis, and PCR. They selected a clone to be sequenced and then analyzed the sequences using bioinformatics. The students compared their sequences with genes from other organisms to determine the evolutionary relationships and sequence conservation.
During the school year, the students will continue with the project with the goal of ultimately analyzing all the clones of the brine shrimp. HS South was one of 21 schools selected for the project.
