This summer's camp will occur once again at Olympic High School in the science labs.

Students will be introduced to some basic skills used in biotechnology labs, and learn what bioinformatics is and how it is used in biotechnology.

Skills include micropipetting, making solution, spectrophotometry, gel electrophoresis, and performing enzymatic reactions. Students will be given lots of opportunities to practice these skills while generating molecular DNA markers that help us tell American Chestnuts from other species used in breeding programs to create blight-resistant varieties.
For many of the students this is a first introduction to the tools of a modern molecular biology labs so lots of practice time is included. We will spend time becoming familiar with micropipetting, using spectrophotometers, and running agarose gels, as well as performing enzymatic reactions.

Students will take several field trips, the first to collect samples of American Chestnuts at Crowder's Mountain, others to visit research labs in the Charlotte area. Students interested in continuing may be invited to continue with the construction of sequencing libraries in Dr. Weller's lab (times to be arranged).

Other topics: jobs in biotechnology/bioinformatics and what types of higher education program students prepared students for those careers.

Other topics: many ethical concerns come up when carrying out biotechnology research - we will discuss a number of scenarios and what types of legal rules are in place.  

By the end of the course students will be able to correctly follow the directions in a lab protocol (a kind of detailed recipe) that yields purified DNA, determine how much DNA they have and how pure it is, perform molecular biology assays using that DNA. Students will learn to interpret the results and present them to an audience.

Since our study organism is the American Chestnut students will also learn 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, local economies, and communities.

This camp provides hands-on experience in wet-lab and computational methods for modern biological research; there will be short lectures, lots of discussions, as well as enrichment materials from the Web to put the lab experience in context and allow students to pursue interests of their own.

Field Trip: On June 14th there is a field trip to Crowder's Mountain to collect samples. Please check the Schedule page for directions if you are arriving separately and the Lists page to make sure you have the necessary permissions and supplies.