BIO 599 Graduate Independent Study
Jeffrey Brentson
Advisor: Dr. Edwin Wong
Fall 2006

Nature of the project;
The independent study project will be creating a research experience for high school students dealing with the Barcode of Life initiative (an international effort to use the COX 1 gene as a ³barcode² to identify eukaryotic organisms).

Methods used in the project
The teacher, students and Dr. Wong will work together to determine the best method to isolate and amplify fish DNA. The goal then will be to try to sequence a variety of local marine fishes and input the sequences into the international Barcode of Life database. All of the students in the teacherıs class will be exposed to the isolation of the DNA, amplification of the COX 1 gene DNA, the sequencing data and interpretation of the data. Only a few of the students will take part in the use of the DNA sequencer due to the distance from WCSU.

Criteria to evaluate the student's performance
The evaluation criteria will be whether or not the teacher and students have successfully sequenced the DNA, input the data on the BOL website and generated a report and interpretation of their results. Results will also be presented at a poster presentation in May 2007, sponsored by the WestConn Institute for Science Teacher Research (WISTR). Most of the data collection and reporting should be finished by February of 2007.

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