service learning day 6

Today, the juniors left to participate in a fair to find service learning projects for next year. They started out by listening to speakers in the MMLH that represented several faculty led projects, including speakers from the Multicultural Symposium, Oral History Project, and the Susi Q Senior Center. Afterwards, the juniors went out into town square and broke off into groups to being brainstorming possible groups and ideas for new individual projects. The juniors brainstormed things in the community that bothered them, and things that they were passionate about. They then searched for juniors with similar concerns or passions to come up with project ideas with. After a short closing discussion and break, the project fair began. This fair included a wider selection of projects, since many of them were student-led. Some of the projects included a program for teaching middle schoolers public speaking skills, a veteran care program, and a project to help encourage low-income families to eat healthy foods. The juniors then returned to the bio-lab to participate in the ongoing DNA barcoding project.

While the juniors were out doing that, the seniors were left in the lab to start the DNA barcoding process. We first started out by each picking a vile of species from a certain location. We then each chose two numbers to place a single species from a vile into that one. We then added 180 ml of buffer to the vile. Using a pestle, we broke up and crushed the species so that the DNA could be easier to access. After this, we added 20 ml of proteinase. We then shook the viles so that the liquids and substances were spread throughout the vile evenly. We finally placed the vile’s into a styrofoam holder and put it into a hot water bath. After this was complete, Juliana, Anna, Ryan and Sierra, returned to Ryan’s grandparents house so that we could collect our final trap that was set. Once we collected that trap, we returned to school.

After lunch, our group was all together again. We then started to complete the PCR process.  We took our samples out of the hot water bath and voted them for 15 seconds. Then added 200 microliters of AL buffer and 200 of Ethanol into our vials and vortexes again. Then we transferred our samples via pipette into a separation vial and implemented them into the spin column where we spun for 1 minute at 6000g. We then added wash buffers 1 and then 2 and followed each of those with 1 minute each in the spin column. After this, Dr. Haney collected it all and we spent the rest of the time cleaning up the lab and finishing up our blogs. Overall it was a successful day and we got a lot done.