Olympic B3 Science Summer Camp 2015
Biotechnology, Biodiversity and Bioinformatics
June 12th - June 26th
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Sponsors and Needs -- Under Construction (always!)
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The activities of this camp could not be carried out were it not for the support of a number of individuals and organizations. Our THANKS to the Following:
Second Year: Burroughs Wellcome Education Enhancement grant 2014-2016 - a very generous award that has helped purchase equipment and supplies, pay volunteers and TAs, and have a fall series of research events.
NC Biotech generously provided a grant in support of the lab activities in both the summer and fall of 2012.This allowed us to buy some of the needed equipment, supplies, reagents, and disposables needed by the students.
2011/2012 American Soybean Board - the GetBiotechSmart program
2011/2012/2013/2014 Union Power Cooperative - the Bright Ideas program
In 2011, the Carolina Medical Center allowed us to select from equipment that was being replaced in their research labs, and donated some plastic tubes and pipettes, which allowed us to make more strategic use of our grant money.
Since 2011 Greiner Bio-one has generously supplemented the supply of tubes and tips, and has generously allowed us to come back to them several times for assistance. In particular we would
like to thank our contacts, Dr. Rafal Persinski and Ms. Mackenzie Farone for visiting the lab and seeing us in action.
Dr. Weller has provided equipment loans and supplemented materials where the class supplies fell short.
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Our 2013 List of One-time needs (equipment)
- Refrigerated benchtop centrifuge with rotors for 50ml, 15 ml and 1.5-2.0 ml sample tubes (such as the one from BioRad)
- Bench-top autoclave, big enough for flasks of growth agar and media (VWR example is ~$5,000 without educational discount)
- A water-purification system to produce molecular-biology grade water (such as Barnstead NanoPure systems)
- Small microwave oven - for lab chemicals only (cannot use one that would be used for food)
- Insulated safety gloves to use with hot solutions
- Standardized ice buckets (2 per bench) - we are using styrofoam boxes but in many cases the standard tube racks do not fit
- Stock bottles for buffer and solvent storage.
- A Nanodrop 2000 Spectrophotometer
- A gel documentation station (UVP GelDoc-It or similar) with filters for SYBR Green and SYBR Gold and ethidium bromide
- A research-grade PCR machine with 2 independent blocks (such as the Eppendorf MasterCycler)
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List of Disposables - ongoing needs every year:
- Marking pens, labelling tape
- Writing pens and lab notebooks
- Printer to print out protocols and things like gel images to put in notebooks
- Bench Kote or other lab surface protection paper
- Kimwipes or equivalent lint-free lab wipes
- Disposable lab coats (4 sizes, small, medium, large and extra-large)
- Nitrile lab gloves, disposable, 4 sizes
- Micropipetter tips (1000, 100, 10 ul size)
- Agarose for gels
- 10X TBE buffer stocks for gels
- Loading dye for gels
- DNA size standards for gels
- Enzymes and associated chemicals for DNA and RNA work (Taq polymerase, T4 DNA ligase, Restriction enzymes, the buffers, dNTPs, ATP, BSA)
- DNA, RNA and protein purification kits and solutions (such as columns from Qiagen and AMpure XP beads from BeckmanCoulter) that allow us to avoid the use of phenol and chloroform
- Molecular-biology grade reagent solutions, including NaCl, KCl, Tris-HCl, EDTA. NH4Cl, ammonium acetate, MgCl2,magnesium acetate, SDS, Tween
- Library QC materials: Qubit dsBR (reagents and tubes), Agilent Bioanalyzer DNA high-sensitivity kits and chips
- Molecular-biology grade ethanol
- Molecular biology grade isopropanol
- Sequencing flow-cell and reagent kits (Illumina Chemistry for 300bp reads in both directions
General:
- Cleaning supplies: paper towels, lab detergent (e.g. Alconox), gloves, sponges in sufficient quantity to clean thoroughly
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Funds for Discretionary items - many scientific organizations provide grants only for equipment, or only for supplies, and only for a specified period of time. Not all chemicals have a long shelf life, and students
must also be fed and transported. Donations for the following would be most welcome.
It would be ideal if we could set up a lab fund or charge-card source (with Mrs. Smith or Ms. Putnam as designated payer) to purchase things like:
- PCR primers from IDT which has charge cards (which are not expensive but do change with the project and so cannot be detailed ahead of time)
- With an enzyme supplier, such as BioOne, New England Biolabs or Promega, for enzymes and associated reagents (these mostly do not have more than one-year shelf life)
- Micropipetter calibration (annual)
- Equipment maintenance - as needed
- Buses for field trips to collection sites.
- Lunches for field trips, snacks during the summer camp, food for presentation days.
We would welcome assistence from parents or local businesses who have some experience doing this.
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Class Presentations
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Lists
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Extra Reading
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Web Links
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Home
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Lab Protocols
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