Hiram Genomics Academy

This article comes to us from the first issue of the Center for Deciphering Life’s Languages E-Newsletter. It is written by the Center’s Director and Associate Professor of Biology, Brad Goodner, and the Center’s Assistant Director Brittany Jackson ’04.

For the past three summers, high school students have been elbow to elbow generating bacterial mutants, figuring out how the mutants were different from each other, cloning out the mutations and learning how to interpret DNA sequence information, all for the sake of advancing scientific knowledge and having fun. Hiram College has hosted two to three sessions of the Hiram Genomics Academy each summer, allowing a total of 129 high school students from high schools all over Ohio as well as Pennsylvania, Michigan, Indiana and Virginia, the opportunity to work with Hiram College faculty and undergraduates on a bacterial genome project.

The students have participated in what is called functional genomics where they start to test hypotheses about gene function based on the complete DNA sequence of the organism. The two target organisms of interest, Agrobacterium tumefaciens and Acidovorax avenae subsp. avenae, are plant pathogens. Functional genomics efforts connect genes to organismal functions and this will allow researchers to better understand how each pathogen interacts with plants causing disease under certain circumstances and not under others.

Hiram College faculty and staff conduct the academy sessions with the assistance of several undergraduate research students who act as veteran mentors for the high school students. The academy sessions provide not only a first-class research experience, but also a chance to live on a college campus for a few days, and are supported by a science education grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute as well as by Hiram College.

The research output of the high school students has been impressive so far. Over 10,000 mutants of Agrobacterium were generated and screened during the 2006-2007 academy sessions, and the mutations were cloned out and sequenced for 140 of these mutants. During 2008, students generated and screened over 2,000 mutants of Acidovorax, resulting in over 40 mutants of interest.

Parent feedback after the academy sessions indicate the unique value of these research opportunities.

• “Few opportunities exist to actively (original emphasis) participate in genetics research as a high school student … [our son] enjoyed the experience immensely both academically as well as socially to the extent that he did not want to return home so soon!”
• “The Genomics Academy was a great experience for [our son]. He talked about it all the way to his baseball game on Saturday. He wanted to stay for the closing ceremony even though that meant missing most of his game (and if you know anything about [him], he doesn’t miss many baseball games). … I also believe this gave him some confidence in his abilities to be able to pursue this type of major.”
• “The staff was professional and upbeat, encouraging the students in their academic pursuits. The academy will prove to be a nice launching pad for [my daughter], now viewing herself as a student, and participant, in the world of biological research.”
  Several of the high school students have chosen to come back to Hiram College as undergraduates to continue their science training.

The 2009 Hiram Genomics Academy will consist of one open-registration session on June 28-July 1, and two weeks in August for the entire sophomore class of the new MC2 STEM High School in Cleveland. Over 110 students are expected to participate in the 2009 sessions.