Posted on January 30, 2009 by BioJobBlogger

Science: How Cool Is This?

Convincing students and adults that science can be fun and even cool at times can be a very challenging proposition. This is mostly because science is perceived as “being hard” and in many cases, the people who teach science are not appropriately trained. Consequently sciences classes are frequently boring and unimaginative. Nevertheless, creative scientists can sometimes figure out ways to overcome these negative perceptions of science. One of the best examples of this is the use of the Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) in some so-called consumer products.  While this application of GFP may pose ethical dilemmas for some, I haven’t met many children or adults who don’t think that transgenic mice, fish or flowers that glow green, red, blue or yellow (or a combination of these colors) in dark aren’t cool! While this wasn’t GFP’s intended use—the scientists who first demonstrated GFP’s utility as a genetic engineering application won a Noble prize last year—it certainly exposed the lay public to wonders and powers of modern day scientists.

With this in mind, researchers at the University of Tokyo’s Institute of Industrial Science (IIS) announced that they had created a 5-millimeter tall doll composed of living cells to demonstrate a new method for fabricating three-dimensional living biological structures. The researchers created the tiny figurine by cultivating 100,000 cell capsules — 0.1-millimeter balls of collagen, each coated with dozens of skin cells — together inside a doll-shaped mold for one day. After the cells had fused to form the doll-shaped structure, it was placed in a culture solution and survived for more than 24 hours. The researchers hope to use the method to create tissues and organs with complex cellular structures, which may prove useful in the fields of regenerative medicine and drug development.

While this new technology may never rival GFP and its multitude of applications, it shows that scientists like to have fun from time-to-time and can introduce complex scientific ideas to the lay public.  In my opinion, many kids get turned off to science at an early age because we scientists take ourselves too seriously and rarely explore ways to inject fun into sometimes tedious and boring material. After all, nobody made it fun for us and we became scientists anyway! We live in a different world now and I can see from watching my own children grow, that today’s  kids today are inquisitive, creative, comfortable with sophisticated technologies and open to new ideas—requisite traits for all scientists!

Unlike the past eight years, a new window of opportunity exists to challenge and convince young people that science is fun and can be very cool at times. To accomplish this, we science educators must step outside of our comfort zones and begin to inject some fun and wonderment into science. The kids will love it and I suspect so will we!

Until next time…

Good Luck and Good Teaching!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

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Posted on October 8, 2008 by BioJobBlogger

GFP Finally Gets Its Due

 As you may have heard, three scientists Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie and Roger Tsien shared this year’s Nobel Prize in chemistry for their pioneering work on the Green Florescent Protein (GFP). GFP revolutionized the fields of molecular biology and cell biology and led to a greater understanding of the roles of proteins in cell, physiology, development and molecular trafficking.

I first became acquainted with GFP back in the mid 1990s when I was working in Bill Ward’s laboratory at Rutgers University. Bill had worked on GFP for over 25 years and I convinced him that GFP would be an ideal educational tool to teach biochemistry and molecular biology to undergraduate students. Prior to my arrival in Bill’s lab, a couple of graduate students had created so-called, “brightness” GFP mutants using molecular evolution techniques that were en vogue at the time. Because they were much brighter than wild type GFP, I used these mutants to develop laboratory exercises that showcased the principles of protein purification, polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and molecular cloning.  Although I published a paper on my work, it was the pioneering work of Ron Mardigian at BioRad that ultimately led to the development in 1997 of GFP-based education kits. Ron’s GFP kits were a huge success and are now used to teach biochemistry and molecular biology at the high school and college levels throughout the world.

GFP is an effective educational tool because everyone including children and adults is fascinated by things that glow. This brings to mind something that happened at a global GFP conference that Bill Ward organized in 1997 at Rutgers University. There were over 300 GFP researchers from all over the world in attendance. Bill, who is something of character and has a flair for the dramatic, wanted to WOW the conference attendees. Prior to the meeting, Bill asked us to prepare 2 liters of bacteria that over expressed the GFP “brightness” mutant. During the opening session of the conference, Bill had the 2 liter flask (sitting on a UV lamp) at the podium with him. The room was very dark (on purpose) and without warning he switched on the lamp—I will never forget the collective, audible gasp from the audience upon seeing the intense green glow emitted from the flask.

Even though I don’t work much with GFP anymore, I still get very excited when I see it.  I suspect that many other people who also work with GFP or any of its color variants BFP (blue), YFP (yellow), RFP (red) etc feel the same way I do about GFP--you just can't wait to see it!

Until next time….

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

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