TEACHERS PUT CLONING INTO CLASSROOMS.Byline: Alicia Doyle Daily News Staff Writer Allen Saute, a new biology teacher at Canoga Park High School Canoga Park High School is a public school located in Canoga Park in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, California, USA, within the Los Angeles Unified School District. It is located right across the street from the Topanga Plaza shopping center. , attended a free workshop in Ventura County on Saturday so he could teach his students an area of science that tends to be more exciting than typical beaker beaker /beak·er/ (bek´er) a glass cup, usually with a lip for pouring, used by chemists and pharmacists. beaker a round laboratory vessel of various materials, usually with parallel sides and often with a pouring spout. experiments. Saute was among a crowd of biology teachers who attended the workshop to learn the principles of gene cloning. ``This is just what I need as a new teacher,'' Saute said. ``Kids really get turned on to this stuff.'' Sponsored by Amgen, the training project was developed in 1990 so teachers could learn how to give high school students the unique experience of cutting and splicing splicing /splic·ing/ (spli´sing) 1. the attachment of individual DNA molecules to each other, as in the production of chimeric genes. 2. RNA s. DNA DNA: see nucleic acid. DNA or deoxyribonucleic acid One of two types of nucleic acid (the other is RNA); a complex organic compound found in all living cells and many viruses. It is the chemical substance of genes. , said Hugh Nelson, a science teacher at Newbury Park High for 25 years. Nearly 30 teachers from Santa Barbara to San Diego attended the daylong event at Newbury Park High School, where they learned ways to teach their students the same principles in a simplified, understandable way. For instance, teachers taking workshops in the past have gone on to show students a technology used in criminal DNA testing DNA testing Analysis of DNA (the genetic component of cells) in order to determine changes in genes that may indicate a specific disorder. Mentioned in: Acoustic Neuroma, Retinoblastoma, Von Willebrand Disease . Students analyze small pieces of DNA from their own cheek cells to see if their genes come from one or both parents. The experiment also involves cutting, splicing and cloning bacterial DNA. In 1990, Amgen recruited Nelson to pilot the laboratory procedures. Since then the project has grown. Today, about 80 teachers at 36 high schools in California This is a list of high schools in the state of California. Alameda County
``This is one of the most exciting areas of science to teach,'' Nelson said. Maurice Stephenson, a chemistry teacher at Moorpark College, attended part of Saturday's workshop to review what he had learned about DNA before graduate school. Though Stephenson teaches chemistry, he said it's possible to implement plasmatic fusion into some labs. ``This workshop is more for biologists than chemists,'' Stephenson said. ``But I wanted to relearn Verb 1. relearn - learn something again, as after having forgotten or neglected it; "After the accident, he could not walk for months and had to relearn how to walk down stairs" what I was taught years ago.'' CAPTION(S): 2 Photos Photo: (1--ran in CONEJO only) Hugh Nelson teaches a cla ss on DNA at Newbury Park High. (2--ran in CONEJO only) Nelson points to three different kinds of DNA inside a bacterial cell. Jeremy Greene/Special to the Daily News |
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