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Programme

The programme of the course, designed by Education Officers Alexandra Manaia and Rossana De Lorenzi, aimed at stimulating science high school teachers to gain knowledge and new skills in genetic engineering and to become familiar with a range of exciting biotechnology activities that can be carried out in a classroom setting. The topic generated a lot of interest and participants came from all over Europe: Denmark, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and Romania.

Day 1

The course started with a talk by EMBL postdoctoral fellow Robert Zinzen. Robert recapitulated the structure of a gene [prokaryotic/ eukaryotic] and the different levels of gene expression regulation. He then explained how scientists analyse gene expression at a small and large scale.

During the late morning and beginning of afternoon, the participants performed an experimental activity devised by Rossana De Lorenzi, reproducing the steps that scientists follow in order to synthesise recombinant human insulin in bacteria cells, including the production of recombinant plasmids and the selection of those where the plasmid has fused with the gene in the right orientation. EMBL PhD student Raquel Matos assisted Rossana in the instruction of this practical.

To close the first day, the teachers learned about DNA chips by playing the famous virtual microarray game devised by Anastasios Koutsos.

Day 2

As in previous LearningLABs, Andrew Moore, EMBO Science & Society Programme Manager, and Thomas Went, Project Manager at Explo-Heidelberg, had been invited to give seminars. This time, Andrew gave an overview of the challenges that science education is facing in Europe. Thomas introduced Explo-Heidelberg activities aimed at high school teachers and students, and he also presented activities that Explo-Heidelberg is developing together with other German and European institutions.

After the seminars Alexandra Manaia and EMBL PhD students Alice Young and Elisa Dultz instructed a hands-on activity on transformation. A kit developed by Bio-Rad-Life Sciences Education was used to transform wild-type E. coli bacteria with a gene that codes for the Green Fluorescent Protein [GFP].

After lunch postdoctoral fellow Ralph Gareus from the Department of Mouse Genetics and Inflammation, University of Cologne, gave a seminar entitled "From Gene to function." Ralph described how scientists interfere with gene expression to get a better insight of gene function. He focused on the mouce model and explained why and how genetically modified mice [transgenic mice, knockout mice, conditional mutants, etc] are generated.

After the talk, the teachers had a look at wild type and transgenic mice lung slides that Ralph had brought. As Maddalena Querci from the EU Joint Research Center [JRC], who had been invited to give a talk on genetically modified organisms [GMOs], couldn't join, Alexandra Manaia gave an introduction covering basic aspects of GMO technology. She explained what GMOs are and why they are needed and gave examples of controversies related to GMOs that arose in Europe. The participants performed a PCR screening for GMOs presence in food products using a kit designed for schools from Bio-Rad - Life Sciences Education.

Day 3

The morning was devoted to the observation and interpretation of the transformation experiment, which was a great success: all groups obtained beautiful fluorescing green colonies, expressing the GFP protein. The group split into 3 subgroups, each lead by an EMBL PhD student [Ann-Marie Glynn, Helena Jambor and Iryna Charapitsa] to play a DEMOCs game on GMO food. The DEMOCs [Deliberative meeting of citizens] are part card game, part policy-making tools that enable small groups of people to engage with complex public policy issues.

In the afternoon, the teachers had a look at the agarose gels, where they had loaded the GMO screening PCR products. To test for the presence GMOs, two pairs of primers had been used in the PCR reaction to identify two DNA sequences which are present in most of the GM crops that are approved for distribution worldwide. The two groups having used soya sprouts bought in a Thai supermarket in Heidelberg obtained positive results indicating that the sprouts came from transgenic soya.

Before leaving, the teachers received HHMI Holiday lectures DVDs and took part in a lottery where they could win Bio-Rad kits for their classroom. The lucky winners were:

		Claudia Freitas [Munich, Germany], who received a kit for screening for GMO presence in food products;
		Cristian Gurzu [Bucarest, Romania] and Penelope Mytinineou [Athens, Greece], who each received a transformation kit.