FOLLOWING TRAILS OF RESEARCH SUMMER BIOTECH CLASSES REVEAL CAREER PATHS FOR SCIENCE STUDENTS.

Byline: LISA M. SODDERS Staff Writer

SYLMAR -- A summer biotechnology class at Mission College is giving students hands-on laboratory research experience in university and biotechnology labs, encouraging them to pursue advanced degrees in science and medicine.

Called TRAILS -- Team Research Approach in Laboratory Science -- the two-year-old program consists of a class in the science of biotechnology, and an internship component in which students work with researchers at California State University, Northridge, and Mannkind Corp. in Valencia.

Students can take either or both options.

``The techniques we're using in the lab are the bread-and-butter techniques of molecular biology, known to regular people as DNA science,'' said Mike Reynolds, Mission College life sciences professor, who helped create the class with professor Angela Echeverri.

``We deal with basic laboratory protocols, techniques in molecular biology -- the science of manipulating and analyzing DNA, RNA and proteins,'' Reynolds said.

``We're looking at the genes and molecules that encode genes, and the substances produced from those genes called proteins.''

Although Pierce and Valley colleges offer similar classes with internship options, Mission has the only summer evening class, Reynolds said. Currently, the class has eight students and the internship program, 10.

Christopher Martinez, 24, of Sylmar, has done two internships in the program -- one at CSUN, one with MannKind -- and is currently taking the biology class. He plans to transfer to CSUN this fall to major in biochemistry and eventually hopes to become a dermatologist.

``Before this class and before the internships, I wasn't aware of what fields were out there,'' said Martinez, who is only the second child in his family to go to college. ``I really didn't know what you could do with a science degree besides go to medical school. I didn't know about research. I didn't know what scientists did.''

Steven Oppenheimer, director of the Center for Cancer and Developmental Biology at CSUN, said programs like TRAILS are critical because they give undergraduates real research experience and set them on the path to becoming scientists.

``The national security, health and welfare depend on producing creative researchers,'' Oppenheimer said. ``If we don't produce the best researchers in the world, this country will go down the tubes.''

Students in his lab identify cell-surface characteristics of cancer cells with the goal of designing drugs that will specifically kill cancer cells, and also do basic research to identify ways to prevent pathogens from binding to human cells.

``I supervise the research of about 100 undergraduate and graduate students per year, and I find (Mission students) to be consistently first-rate and consistently among the most dedicated and the best,'' Oppenheimer said.

This summer, Reynolds is team-teaching the class with Cathy Coyle- Thompson, an adjunct professor at CSUN, and incorporating Coyle-Thompson's research into the class.

``Instead of doing just run-of-the-mill experiments, the students are learning the technology while contributing to the research efforts of Dr. Coyle-Thompson's lab,'' Reynolds explained. ``The work we're doing involves mutant Drosophila -- fruit flies.''

The class has taken field trips to use CSUN's scanning electron microscope and its DNA sequencing facility.

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2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Students from Mission College learn about an electron microscope from professor Cathy Coyle-Thompson during a summer biotech class in which students work with a professor doing research on mutated fruit flies.

(2 -- color) A fruit fly's head appears on an electron microscope console in a Mission College program.

David Sprague/Staff Photographer