On March 29th and March 30th the C. elegans Gene Knockout Project at OMRF was proud to sponsor three students from the Putnam City Schools for Jr. Scientist Day at the OMRF.

Each student was given a notebook from our lab with articles covering the background of C. elegans based research and procedures we would perform through out the morning. Also included was a brochure about the Biotechnology program at the Oklahoma City Community College.

The students were introduced to model organism based research, the development of research resource projects and the basic methods employed on the gene knockout project.

The methods included culturing of the organism, the use of bioinformatics databases, PCR screening and agarose gel electrophoresis. Each student loaded PCR samples containing wild type and deletion mutant DNA PCR product. We then proceeded to look up the target gene on Wormbase; a C. elegans based bioinformatics resource.

The lab day was concluded by reviewing the poster of a research project using a gene knockout and breaking for lunch.

The project staff enjoyed each of our sponsored students and encourages each student to consider us a resource for future questions about the work we do.

We appreciate the Putnam City School’s efforts in support of research at the OMRF.

The sponsored students were:

March 29th, Landon Poteet of Harvest Hills Elementary School

March 30th, Hannah Carr of Cooper Middle School and Dria Hampton of Hefner Middle School