Class Examines DNA by Tearing Hair Out
Jill Larson bit her lower lip, squinted and abruptly yanked a single hair from her blond head.
“It’s kind of masochistic,” she said, smiling as she held the hair up to the light, her pain dulled by scientific ardor. Somewhere within that fair strand--on chromosome No. 8 to be exact--lay the DNA that held the gene she was looking for.
Marty Ikkanda, the Pierce College biology instructor leading the DNA experiment, surveyed the scene with a practiced eye: 20 students, all college and high school science teachers, gamely tearing their hair out.
“It’s hard to do it to yourself,” he said. “It’s easier if someone else does it.”
The class, part of a two-week biotechnology workshop at Pierce, was immersed in a world of forceps and enzyme solutions, microscopes and centrifuges.
Eventually, the students would learn to use polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a technique that allows a single piece of DNA to be copied billions of times, Ikkanda said. This week, they used their own hair and cheek cells to extract DNA.
“They’ll go through a procedure of actually breaking cells open and separating the DNA from the other parts of the cell,” he said. “Once the DNA is isolated, we will do PCR with it.”
The workshop, one of several Pierce has offered over the past three years, was sponsored by Miami University in Ohio and the National Science Foundation. Among other things, participants would learn to locate, isolate and clone a jellyfish gene.
The hands-on lab work allows them to conduct the experiments they will teach their students about. “I’d say most people who are teaching in colleges today have never done PCR,” Ikkanda said.
The course, taught by Ikkanda, two other Pierce biology instructors and a philosophy teacher, also explores the ethics of genetic research and engineering. Educators from all over the country attended, free of charge.
“Biotechnology techniques have changed so much since I got out of school in 1991,” said Larson, a chemistry and environmental science professor at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College in Green Bay. “I really think my students need to know about this.”
