A Training Program for Small College Faculty in DNA Manipulation and Human Genetics

Purpose

Medicine, law, religion, civic life, family life, education-there is hardly an area of contemporary existence that has not been touched by advances in molecular biology and by the Human Genome Project in particular. As we enter the next century, this impact will continue to grow. Not only will today's students be affected personally by applications of molecular genetics, but those entering the workforce in agriculture, medicine, manufacturing and law will need a basic knowledge of DNA science to exercise their professions.

The single most likely place for students to at least begin to gain this knowledge is in introductory biology courses. Crucial for biology majors, these courses may be even more important for non-majors, because they are often the last exposure to the life sciences for these students. The nationwide Coalition for Education in the Life Sciences is especially concerned that students in these courses experience a worthwhile laboratory experience—something difficult to achieve in view of the large enrollments in these classes and the nearly universal funding shortages.

Faculty in charge of these courses are feeling pressure to improve the laboratories—specifically, to introduce laboratories in molecular genetics—from an unexpected source: their students, many of whom received this kind of instruction in high school. The Educational Testing Service now mandates DNA restriction analysis and bacterial transformation experiments in the advanced placement biology curriculum. It is reasonable to estimate that as many as 75,000 precollege students are exposed to laboratories in molecular genetics every year.

Responding to these demands poses special problems, however, for faculty at institutions where they are expected to devote themselves to teaching. Over the years, they may have lost touch with current research and may lack the confidence to develop appropriate experiments, especially given the scarcity of laboratory equipment and resources at many such institutions.

The ultimate goal of this project was to introduce exercises in basic gene manipulation in first- and second-year college courses, thereby imparting "genetic literacy" to students and stimulating their interest in the life sciences. To achieve this, the project intended to give the teachers of these courses hands-on experience in molecular genetics through a series of laboratories focused on a simple prokaryotic system designed for large numbers of students.

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories' DNA Learning Center was particularly qualified to carry out this task. Not only was the Laboratories' director, James Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA and founding director of the National Center for Human Genome Research, but many gene manipulation techniques basic to the genome project were developed at the laboratories, which also have a long and distinguished history of involvement in biology education.

Innovative Features

In the years just before the project, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories' DNA Learning Center, the nation's first institution devoted exclusively to public genetics education, developed and tested two basic molecular genetics curricula. The first, "DNA Science, A First Course in Recombinant DNA Technology," is intended for advanced high school students and stops short of the DNA hybridization techniques needed to isolate a single gene from a library of genes. The second, "Laboratory DNA Science, An Introduction to Recombinant DNA Techniques and Methods of Genome Analysis," features more advanced experiments related to the Human Genome Project, allowing for the construction and analysis of gene libraries. Together, the curricula can take a college freshman or sophomore with no previous knowledge of the subject to a comprehensive understanding of modern methods for isolating and analyzing genes.

The curriculum's laboratories use E. coli and its endogenous virus, lambda, to illustrate the techniques used in the analysis of eukaryotic genomes. Because of the bacterium's fast generation time, small genome, and ease of manipulation, it can be used to introduce sophisticated molecular techniques without the technical and regulatory complexities of working with human DNA.

The laboratories' designers sought to modify current research protocols to minimize expense and ensure safety and reproducibility. And they strove to preserve the integrity of the research methods involved so that students going on to more advanced situations would not need to relearn them. Adapting research techniques to the teaching laboratory was no easy matter. For example, to simplify the interpretation of experiment results, DNA Learning Center staff developed three new plasmids which transform well, are highly amplified in E. coli, and give consistent yields in plasmid preparations. These are probably the only DNA molecules specifically engineered for educational purposes.

Because the new protocols are biochemically complex and require novel reagents, the DNA Learning Center collaborated with a number of corporations to redesign research-grade kits for education. They also issued a license to a commercial supplier to market two polymerase chain reaction kits—stand-alone experiments that employ simplified protocols and inexpensive substitutes for equipment, reduce preparation time, and are straightforward to use. One kit allows students to amplify a segment of their own DNA using a polymerase chain reaction.

The faculty development workshops that project staff created to ensure the broad dissemination of the curriculum were intended to put DNA manipulation technology within the reach of any motivated college instructor. The workshops built on the introduction to DNA provided by most standard survey texts. The laboratories presupposed no prior knowledge of molecular technology, and they proceeded cumulatively, repeatedly bringing major techniques into play to allow participants to gain confidence in their use.

Training was offered in two sets of intensive ten-day summer workshops located at major universities. The workshops were held at Howard University and the University of Chicago the first summer and at Columbia University and California State University, Northridge, the second. The host universities were chosen because they were accessible to faculty from a large number of institutions and because their prestige would attract applicants and underscore the rigor of the experience. Winter follow-ups were held in the same locations. Workshop staff consisted of a senior instructor, a coordinator, and a college intern who served as a laboratory aide.

The workshops featured 22 experiments. They began with an introduction of basic techniques of microbial culture and proceeded to agarose gel electrophoresis, DNA restriction and ligation, and plasmid isolation. These techniques were then extended to gene library construction and screening, Southern hybridization, polymerase chain reaction, and human DNA fingerprinting.

In addition, lectures related the laboratories to the Human Genome Project and to genetic medicine. Local academic and industry researchers gave seminars on applications of the laboratory techniques presented. And participants discussed the ethical, social and personal issues raised by the ability to manipulate the human genome, as well as the financial, scheduling and safety issues involved in teaching the new laboratories.

The follow-up workshop was intended to reinforce faculty confidence and to explore in more detail the practical aspects of laboratory-based teaching in genetics. It included three entry-level experiments that used elements of the laboratories presented during the summer: E-Z DNA recombination, restriction mapping, and forensic plasmid identification.

Evaluation and Project Impact

The workshops attracted a total of 84 participants. 75 percent of them were white, 16 percent black, 5 percent Asian, and 4 percent Hispanic. Sixty-three percent were male and 37 percent female, reflecting the makeup of the applicant pool. Forty-three percent came from colleges with under 5,000 students, and four out of ten came from institutions half or more of whose students were minority or disadvantaged. Two out of ten came from institutions where 20 percent to 49 percent of the students were minority or disadvantaged. Two-thirds of the home institutions were public; one-third were private.

Participants were surveyed before and after the workshop, and again 17 months after the experience. The surveys generated a 79 percent response which revealed that the curriculum had been well received-due in part to the experiments' 80 to 100 percent success rate, one result of their thorough prior testing. Faculty suggested modifications to the schedule to reduce confusion caused by overlapping experiments. They were particularly pleased with the seminars and discussions on the social, ethical and legal repercussions of genetic technology and the history of the eugenics movement in the United States.

The majority of participants reported that they had incorporated two to three laboratories into their teaching in the year after the workshop and planned to incorporate more as equipment and reagents became available. Entry-level laboratories (bacterial transformation and DNA restriction analysis) were the first to be used. Half of the participants had made presentations on workshop topics to their colleagues, ten percent had made presentations at professional meetings, and ten percent had led teacher training workshops.

Predictably, faculty stated that the main constraint to teaching laboratory-based molecular genetics was the lack of equipment. But here again there may be cause for optimism-half of the respondents attempted to obtain funds or equipment donations for the new laboratories and succeeded to the extent of matching FIPSE per-participant costs at a seven-to-one ratio.

The DNA Learning Center continues to track faculty in the original and following workshops in ways comparable to the tracking of 2,000 high school teachers who received professional training from the center. The resulting database should yield a useful picture of genetics instruction at the advanced high-school and beginning college level.

Lessons Learned

Perhaps because of the absence of direct participant support, applicant response to the workshops was less than half of the response to similar programs offered by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories. Staff had geared the workshops strictly to teaching and had to carefully screen out the many applicants who wanted to learn DNA techniques for their own research. In choosing the participants, staff selected not only for motivated applicants but for "motivated institutions"-those who showed a willingness to offer their faculty the kind of support they would need to integrate the workshop's teachings into their own courses.

Project Continuation

Due to lack of funding, the workshops are no longer offered.

Dissemination

Laboratory DNA Science: An Introduction to Recombinant DNA Techniques and Methods of Genome Analysis, by Mark V. Bloom, David A. Miklos, and Greg A. Freyer was published in 1995 and incorporates feedback from workshop participants.

Available Information

Further information may be obtained from:

Mark Bloom
DNA Learning Center
One Bungtown Road
Cold Spring Harbor, NY 11724
Telephone: 516-367-7240

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