An enthusiastic group of advanced biology students from Elkhart Lake-Glenbeulah spent more than three hours at Lakeland College on Thursday afternoon, working with Associate Professor of Biology Greg Smith.
The students, who are enrolled in a dual-credit BIO 111 (Life Science I) class at their high school, experimented in Lakeland’s laboratories with recombinant DNA technology.
“Basically, we cut and spliced DNA to make new combinations,” Smith explained. “We isolated and purified DNA samples, cut them at specific sequences and visualized the fragments we created using gel electrophoresis.”
This was the second time Elkhart Lake-Glenbeulah science teacher Travis Moore has brought students to Lakeland. In the fall, Paul Pickhardt, Lakeland’s associate professor of biology, hosted an environmental science class. That group extracted water samples from nearby Jetzer Lake, brought them back to campus and studied them under microscopes to evaluate life forms.
“Travis does a fantastic job preparing them in terms of knowledge, but most high schools don’t have the facilities to do the lab work we can do here,” Smith said. “It’s rewarding to see these students put their knowledge into practice, enjoy hands-on learning and perform real science with our equipment.”