How to Incorporate Art Into Biology High School Class

"It's an opportunity to show a different side of biological science," said instructor Michaela Danek about incorporating agar art into 10th course biology. "Information technology draws in dissimilar students."

Danek is a science teacher at The Nueva Schoolhouse, a non-profit, independent school serving gifted students in San Mateo, CA. She and her colleague Trip Sweeney revamped the school's required 10th grade biology course for the 2018-2019 school year. The new microbiology unit of measurement develops students' lab skills and background knowledge before culminating in a creative and unusual final project - students take to pattern a living slice of "agar fine art" showcasing what they've learned. The idea came from Sweeney, who taught a semester-long agar art elective the twelvemonth earlier inspired by his experience as a pathology resident and his exposure to ASM's contest and Alexander Flemming's body of piece of work. Said Sweeney, "I walked into the Dean'south role and asked if I could teach an 'Agar Fine art' elective and she welcomed the proposal."

Before students go to the much-anticipated final projection, Danek and Sweeney emphasize the basics. Students begin the unit learning how to culture many unlike species of bacteria, from Escherichia coli to Micrococcus luteus to Pseudomonas fluorescens. Students experiment with different media and civilization conditions, such as temperature and the presence of antibiotics. Observing growth patterns for each species over many unlike conditions reveals the metabolic diversity of the bacterial world. Since none of the bacteria students work with are human pathogens, they also learn that bacteria exercise many things in our globe bated from making people sick.

Midway through the unit, Danek runs a classic bacterial unknown activeness, handing students cultures that they must identify past designing and carrying out a serial of growth experiments based on what they've learned so far. The activity uses blueprint thinking and allows students to experience trial and error and the importance of iteration, things Danek and Sweeney purposefully wove throughout their redesigned curriculum. And, since a state-of-the-art biology class wouldn't be complete without genomics, students also sequence their cultures' 16S rRNA genes to confirm their agar-based identification.

In the second half of the unit of measurement, students become from investigating the natural multifariousness of bacteria to manipulating microbes for specific purposes. Genetic experiments, like transforming plasmids that encode colorful proteins into E. coli, help students learn about the natural exchange of genetic material betwixt bacteria, as well equally how this process has been exploited in biotechnology. They probe the regulation of cistron expression with inducible promoters and once again examine how a natural phenomenon has been co-opted for homo purposes.

Finally, students create a piece of agar fine art using any combination of techniques and organisms from the unit of measurement. Fifty-fifty the terminal project is iterative, as students often don't go the effect they intended on their first effort. "With added time, the process also allows for many interesting, unintentional 'compositions,' to grow themselves," said Sweeney. Danek notes that students like the opportunity to exist artistic while showing off their new cognition and skills. Some students even go along to focus on observations made during the creation of their agar art for their independent project in the 2d semester of the class.

"Plasmid Water Lillies," Maya Chawla, Paige Mountanos, and Tara Saxena. 2018. For this agar art piece, the focus was on the transformation and interactions of plasmids. To create the piece, 2μL of chloramphenicol was combined with 20mL of LB agar with 2μL of blue dye (for color). From in that location, xanthous plasmid was painted on and, following that, the magenta plasmid. Both plasmids contained chloramphenicol resistance, and both were resuspended for a brightened color. Clay modeled in the shape of a bridge was then filled with LB agar and left to ready. The LB agar was so removed from the mold and placed on top of this plasmid slice. The agar plate was left to grow for ane day in an incubator at 37 degrees Celsius.

Danek is excited to teach the second full iteration of the course this coming school year to a course of near 115 sophomores. Over the summer, she ran a iii-calendar week long mini version of the agar fine art unit every bit part of the Stanford Pre-Collegiate Summer Institutes program for rising high school freshmen and sophomores. Every bit a former public school teacher, Danek acknowledges that what she's been able to do at The Nueva School is hard to replicate elsewhere. Like her students, she hopes to employ pattern thinking and iteration to reduce costs and prep fourth dimension for the unit to adapt it to other schools.

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Inspired by Danek's students? Commencement working on your microbial masterpiece today. Submissions for ASM's 2021 Agar Art Contest will open in September.

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Source: https://asm.org/Articles/2019/August/Inspiring-High-School-Students-Creativity-and-Desi

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