HiGene: A Genome Sequencing Project for High Schools

Posted February 6th, 2009 by avershon
One hundred and fifty five high school teachers, who will offer instruction to 5,500 students in New Jersey, learn how to extract DNA from worm specimens and - once those specimens have been processed by a professional lab - access bioinformatics resources online to analyze the DNA sequences. Students then submit their results to an international database of DNA sequences, thus contributing to the cache of knowledge about genomes.
Project Information
Cohort: 
5 (2007/2008-2010/2011)
Category: 
Comprehensive
Principal Investigator: 
Andrew Vershon
Bill Sofer
Co-Principal Investigator(s): 
Lenore Neigeborn
Sponsor: 
Rutgers
Primary Focus: 
Bioscience
Organization Location City: 
Piscataway
Organization Location Region/State: 
Middle Atlantic
New Jersey (NJ)
Where project work happens: 
Middle Atlantic
New Jersey (NJ)
Other Area(s) of Focus: 
Bioscience
Participant type: 
High School Students
High School Teachers
Target Area: 
Urban
Award Number: 
07-37574
Overview Section

Rutgers University will provide a comprehensive project in molecular biology and bioinformatics that engages high school teachers and students in DNA sequencing research. More than 75 teachers will participate in the project and approximately 30 students per year will attend the summer program and 300 additional students will engage in the Project during each academic year.

Activities Section

PROJECT ACTIVITIES
Explore ways to effectively integrate bioinformatics and structural biology into existing high school programs so that it becomes a permanent offering of the science curriculum.

Offer a four-week summer Institute and continued academic year follow up activities to enhance the science backgrounds and computing skills of high school biology teachers.

To achieve this, and to model how scientists use information technology (IT) to support their work, BRITE will work with teachers to develop Waksman Challenges. These are problems in molecular biology, bioinformatics and structural biology that teams of high school students pursue using the resources of IT. Challenges will be used for both classroom instruction and evaluation of how comfortable teachers become at integrating IT into their existing science curricula.

Project Links
News and Events: 
High-School scientists decode DNA sequence, present findings
Other ITEST Project associated with the project: 
Bioinformatics: The Rutgers Initiative in Teacher Enhancement (BRITE)