This summer's camp will occur at Olympic High School in the science labs. Students will be introduced to some basic skills used all the time in biotechnology and bioinformatics experiments. For many of them this is an introduction to the tools of a modern molecular biology labs so lots of practice time is included. We will spend time becoming familiar with pipetting, using spectrophotometers, and running agarose gels, as well as performing enzymatic reactions. We will extract DNA from samples of leaves we collect from Amwerican Chestnut trees (and hybrids) growing around Charlotte, and then perform restriction digestion and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays that yield DNA fingerprints on those samples. Students will also learn how to use a number of computational tools, including how to perform a BLAST search and how to design PCR primers with on-line bioinformatics tools.  

By the end of the course students will be able to correctly follow the directions in a protocol that yields purified DNA, determine the concentration and integrity of the DNA, design and perform specific PCR assays, perform and analyze the resulting patterns.They will know something about the historical place of the American chestnut tree in the North Carolina biosphere and how its loss due to the blight has changed the forest environment.

This camp provides hands-on experience in wet-lab and computational methods for modern biological research; there will be seminars and discussions, as well as enrichment materials to put the lab experience in context.