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July 19
Interesting News Article from The New York Times:
Teachers' Ongoing Training Includes DNA Lessons
By KAREN W. ARENSON
Shannon Stapleton for The New York Times
Scott Bronson, a lab instructor, explained how an enzyme digests a membrane that holds in place cells containing DNA. When the temperature is raised to boiling, the cells break open, letting the DNA out.
In Depth
Education
COLD SPRING HARBOR, N.Y. — The teachers were pulling out their hair.
Nearly two dozen high school biology teachers sat in a spacious new laboratory here recently, tugging determinedly at strands of their own hair to provide DNA samples they could analyze.
They wanted strands with elongated root bulbs that would yield plentiful supplies of DNA. But as they discovered, harvesting them is not so easy for those who have entered middle age and whose hair is thinning.
The teachers hoped to take such DNA isolation procedures back to their classrooms to initiate students into the rapidly changing mysteries of molecular genetics.
For now, however, they were the ones being initiated, because this was DNA Boot Camp at the Dolan DNA Learning Center at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a program to prepare a new generation of teachers for the dramatic shifts in biology they and their students will need to grapple with in class. This is the program's fourth summer in operation.
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