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08/20/2024 | News release | Distributed by Public on 08/20/2024 23:43

Young GENEiuses: SummerLab Gives Teens a Chance to Learn about State of the Art CRISPR Technology

Young GENEiuses: SummerLab Gives Teens a Chance to Learn about State-of-the Art CRISPR Technology

NIH-funded program is a collaboration between Wheelock and the Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine

High schoolers Justin Song of Ohio (left) and Derrick Huang of Weston, Mass., learn from Summerlab senior scientist Kathleen Li (Wheelock'21) during a gel electrophoresis and visualization lab July 23. SummerLab-a project of Boston University's CityLab-provides high school students access to cutting-edge biotechnology laboratory facilities and curriculum unavailable to most school systems.

Life Sciences

Young GENEiuses: SummerLab Gives Teens a Chance to Learn about State-of-the Art CRISPR Technology

NIH-funded program is a collaboration between Wheelock and the Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine

August 20, 2024
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Teenagers experimenting with gene editing technology over their summer break sounds like it could be the plot of a B-level science fiction movie. But at BU, it was real life. Welcome to SummerLab, a collaboration between BU's Wheelock College of Education & Human Development and Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, where high school students as young as 15 spent two weeks on the Charles River Campus learning about gene editing using the Nobel Prize-winning CRISPR technology. Donning lab coats, the students worked in groups to edit a gene in non-harmful strains of E. coli bacteria-which is used as a model for human cells-and simulated the process used by scientists to edit the gene that causes sickle cell anemia.

"The fact that you can actually do these experiments and manipulate the results, instead of just reading about it or watching a video about it-I have so much power in my hands," says Rhea Yadav, 16, who is entering her junior year at Winchester (Mass.) High School this fall.

SummerLab's Gene Editing in Human Diseaseprogram was funded through a five-year, $1.3 million Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to develop, test, and evaluate a new version of Mystery of the Crooked Cell (MCC), a laboratory-based molecular biology curriculum supplement for middle and high school students.

There was clearly pent-up demand for the free program: after registration opened in January, the program was filled within three days, with a waiting list 100 names long, according to Carla Romney, director of research at CityLab and one of the three principal investigators on the project.

CityLab, founded in 1991, is a biotechnology laboratory for middle and high school teachers and their students administered by the BU medical school. The Gene Editing in Human Disease program is part of CityLab.

Yadav, who participated in a different SummerLab experience in 2023 and enjoyed it so much that she continued as a CityLab Scholar during the school year, was the first student on the waiting list for this program, and she made it into the inaugural group of gene editors when another student was unable to attend. Participants in the program came to BU from as far away as Florida, Ohio, New York-and even Italy.

Photo by Cydney Scott

While SummerLab has exposed high school students to experiences in molecular biology and biotechnology since its founding in 1996, this was the first time that students have had a chance to work with CRISPR (short for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats), the innovative technique that has been adapted into a gene editing system to modify DNA in human cells. (At SummerLab, however, students work with bacterial cells and never human cells.) Research scientists are using CRISPR to rewrite the genetic code of almost any living organism, opening up promising applications for curing many genetic diseases.

Donald DeRosa, a Wheelock clinical associate professor emeritus and a principal investigator on the grant, says the students are applying CRISPR to sickle cell anemia because "it's a good model to work with in terms of learning about proteins and point mutations and how they interact with one another." DeRosa says the gene editing curriculum goes beyond merely teaching concepts and developing lab skills and techniques-it also seeks to sharpen students' socio-scientific reasoning.

"We really want students to be able to think about the ethical and moral responsibilities that come with a potentially powerful science, and gene editing is one of those," DeRosa says.

CityLab founder Carl Franzblau, a Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine professor of biochemistry, adds that the experience "is designed to make students think and use their science and reasoning skills to solve the immediate challenges placed before them in the lab" along with "the longer-term challenges that society will face as editing of the human genome becomes mainstream."

While Romney and DeRosa oversee the operation of SummerLab each year, the lab-based summer programs are facilitated by Boston-area STEM educators-most of them BU Wheelock alumni-as well as high school-aged peer lab assistants who have attended the SummerLab and Scholars programs in the past. Kathleen Li (Wheelock'21), who teaches chemistry, math, and biology at Phoenix Charter Academy in Chelsea, Mass., was one of the educators for SummerLab's inaugural gene editing course. She says she came away deeply impressed with the students in the program.

"It's been such an honor working with them because they're such strong thinkers, questioners, and they want to know everything," says Li, whose advisor while she was studying at Wheelock was DeRosa. "It's really helping me learn more deeply about the subject myself, because I'm learning along with them, and we're developing a lot of this curriculum alongside Don and Carla."

At the end of the two-week gene editing experience, students presented posters demonstrating what they did and learned about the promise and challenges of using gene editing to treat sickle cell anemia. Franzblau says he was impressed with how much the students learned and what that means for the future STEM workforce.

Students presented their posters demonstrating what they learned about sickle cell anemia and the promise gene editing holds for treating the disease. Photo by Stuart Beard

"It was extremely exciting for us and the fantastic teachers and pre-college students who were part of SummerLab to explore the world of gene editing and see firsthand how important this technology will be for the future of medicine and the reduction of human disease," he says.

Increasing the pipeline of new workers in health and medicine is a key priority of the SEPA grant program, and Yadav says the experience reinforced her desire to pursue her interest in biology or biotechnology in college.

"I've met so many new people, and connecting with more people with similar interests is really fun," Yadav says. "The teachers make it so easy to understand the concepts because they understand that everyone in the classroom comes from different backgrounds and different education levels. It was a really great experience for anyone who wants to gain experience in biotechnology, protein, protein purification, and gene editing."

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  • Steve Holt

    Senior Editor/Writer Twitter Profile

    Steve Holt is a senior editor and writer responsible for print alumni magazines at the Wheelock College of Education and Human Development, School of Theology, and the Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences. He came to BU in 2022 from Appalachian Mountain Club, where he was a senior editor at the nonprofit's award-winning member magazine. For more than a decade before that, Steve built a prolific freelance journalism career, collecting bylines in numerous print and online publications, such as The Boston Globe, Boston magazine, Civil Eats, Business Insider, and Bloomberg CityLab. His Edible Boston story about sustainable hamburgers in Boston was selected for inclusion in the Best Food Writing2011 anthology. Steve holds a bachelor's degree in journalism and a master's in theology from Abilene Christian University. Profile

  • Cydney Scott

    Photojournalist

    Cydney Scott has been a professional photographer since graduating from the Ohio University VisCom program in 1998. She spent 10 years shooting for newspapers, first in upstate New York, then Palm Beach County, Fla., before moving back to her home city of Boston and joining BU Photography. Profile

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